


Unspoken Lifelines

by DerangedBlackKitten



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bipolar Disorder, Depression, End of the World, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Major Illness, Pandemic - Freeform, Sickfic, Suicidal Thoughts, Virus, dadvid
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-01-15 13:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12321966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DerangedBlackKitten/pseuds/DerangedBlackKitten
Summary: Eighty percent of the reason why he takes in this sniffling little germ factory is because he's the only available adult around and it's the right thing to do—the other twenty percent is because David's kind of hoping he'll also get sick and die just like the rest of humanity seems to be doing.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off the plot of **The Last Man on Earth** , in the sense that there's a super virus that wipes out almost all of human and animal life on Earth. Unlike the TV show though, this story takes place sorta in the middle of it all rather than after everyone's already gone, during humanity's death throes when civilization is falling. There may or may not be four parts to this story, but right now I'm setting it at three. 
> 
> FYI, Daniel is barely in this story (he has one scene). The focus of this fic is David and Max. _(David is 20 years old in this and Max is 6. It will also not be an insanely long story. 20K words maximum, but most likely less)_

**Unspoken Lifelines**

**_Chapter 1_ **

David is not in the best place mentally when the world ends.

Just five months ago, he’d been sitting in a cubical with his Academic Advisor, talking about what kind of internship positions he’d be applying for now that he was entering his Junior year. Earning a bachelor’s degree in social work required more than just classroom time, and all of his professors had stressed the importance of getting in as much field work as possible before you graduated.

 _“You’re smart, getting a jump on it now,”_ his advisor had said, and then she’d coughed into the crook of her elbow, cleared her throat and said, _“Sorry. Think I might be coming down with something.”_

He’d squirted some antibacterial gel into his hands on his way out the door that morning; couldn’t be getting sick now with all his classes starting up soon. One month later, he’d be hearing all over every news channel that it wouldn’t have helped anyway.

David hasn’t shown up to any of his classes for eight weeks now. Not because he got sick—or at least, not sick in the same way so many of his classmates and professors have gotten sick—but because he’d woken up one morning and found that he couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed, much less take a shower and get ready for his first class that day.

That was fine though, that was okay, because everyone deserves a mental health day… week… month… _months—_

Okay so, he hasn’t exactly been able to find his sense of motivation just yet, but at the very least, he does get up and use the bathroom whenever his body deems it necessary, and he _has_ been able to find the energy to eat every day. The shower thing hasn’t been happening as often as he’d like, but he has managed to up his showering habits to once a week instead of once every two weeks, and— _and,_ just last week, he’d gone grocery shopping at the 7-Eleven down the street. If those aren’t improvements, David doesn’t know what is.

This is just a bump in the road, a hiccup in his brain chemistry. His mom had them, he’s been told his dad had them, and now David has them too. Mental health problems run in his family as much as red hair and freckles do, and David has learned long ago that it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Lots of people get sad.

And lots of people get angry and scared and _manic—_

Especially lately.

Of course, David mostly blames this particular episode on his prescription running out and him not being able to get through to his doctor to get a refill. He tries calling the office whenever cell reception comes back on, but so far hasn’t had any luck. More than once, David’s thought about walking to the nearest CVS himself and seeing if they’ll just fill his prescription for him. He never follows through on the plan though.

When his cellphone goes off that morning, instead of his alarm, it plays a recording of his own voice, one he made over a year ago and forgot about up until now.

_“Gooooood **morning** , Future David! This is Past David, waking you up on this lovely morning to wish you a Happy Birthday! Wow, the Big Two-Oh. Where **has** the time gone?”_

The groan David smothers into his pillow could only be described as long-suffering.

 _“I hope the year is going as dandy for you as it is for me now! Just think, in another year’s time, you’ll be on your way to graduating! But enough about **your** future. Let’s talk about **my** future instead. How’s life? Have we made any new friends? Oh! Are we **dating**_ _anyone? How exciting!”_

‘ _Oh my_ **_god_** _—’_ he thinks.

 _“Well,”_ the recording says, sounding quite pleased with itself, “ _I won’t keep you any longer. I’m sure you have lots to do today; classes to go to, assignments to work on, chores to do. We always do fall behind on our laundry, don’t we?_ ” the recording chuckles, and David kinda feels like throwing his phone across the room. _“Anyway, I hope you have a good day and an **even more** wonderful birthday! Au revoir!_ ”

Right. He made that back when he’d been taking French 101.

A quick glance at his phone tells him that it’s a little past eight in the morning. A good time to get up and start the day for any normal person, but instead, David rolls over onto his stomach with his pillow hugged to his chest. He lies there, kind of awake, but mostly drifting, feeling almost like he’s dizzy, floating—sort of like how he feels when he takes a few Ativan to cut off a relapsed manic episode at the pass. He’s really messed up his sleep schedule these past few weeks and it definitely shows—up until 5AM and then sleeping until noon, up for another two hours to eat and watch whatever TV is still on the air, and then asleep for another four. Lather, rinse, repeat in no particular order.

David remembers when he used to be a morning person. He remembers when he’d go to bed at eleven and get up at six like clockwork.

He doesn’t move until his actual alarm goes off an hour later—and then he hits his snooze button another ten or fifteen more times after that until two more hours have passed before he finally manages to drag himself up into a sitting position.

Blinking unevenly at the brown water stain mark on the opposite wall, David reaches a hand up underneath the back of his shirt to scratch at one shoulder blade, and he has to wrinkle his nose up at the almost oily slick feel of his skin. The longer he’s awake, the more it starts to hit him just how itchy his scalp is and how greasy his hair feels when he drags his fingers through it. He feels sticky and gross, and there’s no denying the pungent scent of old sweat and body odor that’s coming off his clothes and from underneath his arms.

Regardless of whatever mental health issues you may be having, eventually you reach a point where your personal hygiene—or lack thereof—bothers even yourself, and you can acknowledge that you are in fact as disgusting as you feel. Whether or not you actually do something about it is another matter entirely, but at the very least, you can admit to yourself that you’ve gotten pretty grody and a shower would probably be a good idea at some point in the near future.

David doesn’t immediately hop into the shower, but the idea of taking one is in the forefront of his mind, so the possibility of it actually happening is promising. What he does do though is get up from his bed, which is a plus, and he grabs a box of cereal from the kitchen cabinets of his tiny studio apartment and flops down onto the couch of his even smaller ‘living room’ space to turn on the TV.

Static is the first thing that answers him, and David slouches low in the couch cushions when he sees it. That particular channel had been _Animal Planet_ , and he’s sad to see it go. Even at his lowest moments, he had always enjoyed watching the different animal and nature shows.

_‘Not anymore, I guess…’_

Sighing, David pops open the box of cereal and grabs a fistful of cornflakes to munch on while he looks for something else to watch. He flips past the channels that are static or dead air—there seems to be more and more stations going out each day—until he finds a network that’s actually still functioning. It’s a news channel—because of course it is—and they’re talking about the very last thing David even wants to be thinking about.

_“Hospitals across the country and around the world have been closing their doors, telling people to look elsewhere for their medical needs. People have been flocking in droves to the few that remain open, but as you all know, there is simply not enough staff to accommodate the sudden influx of patients. Every day, more and more doctors and nurses are succumbing to the virus due to their close proximity to the infected—”_

David flips to the next channel; more static, but he’d rather watch that than the news. TV is supposed to be an escape, not this—this constant deluge of one terrible thing after another.

Chomping down on a mouthful of cornflakes, he skips past more dead air channels, mentally noting each one—Comedy Central, FX, Disney, Discovery—before he stumbles onto yet another news channel, like they’re the only thing that’s still up and running at this point.

 _“—and at 4:05 this morning, the last international flight out of America touched down in France at Charles dee Gaulle Airport,_ ” the reporter announces—and, well, that doesn’t seem so bad, does it? Except she keeps talking, going on to say with a rather somber look on her face, _“Upon landing, it was reported that 17 out of 120 passengers, including two flight attendants, did not survive the eight-hour flight. As previously announced, all commercial airlines, for both international and domestic air travel, will be shut down until further notice—"_

David turns off the TV. He’s not sure how long he sits on the couch, staring at a black screen and stuffing handful after handful of cereal into his mouth before it occurs to him to put a DVD in and watch that instead.

He decides to go with _Planet Earth._ It’s one of his favorites and he feels like he could use a pick-me-up.

If his eyes start watering ten minutes into it because it makes him think of all the footage of dead wildlife they’ve been showing on the news lately—well, there’s no one there to see it but himself.

He runs out of cereal before the first disk finishes playing

 

* * *

 

Somewhere in the middle of watching the third disk of _Planet Earth_ , David falls asleep curled up on his side with a throw blanket pulled over him. When he wakes up two hours later, it’s to the sound of someone slipping a piece of paper under his door and walking away. For a split second, he feels a rush of energy—because there’s another _person_ out there and it’s been so long since David has talked to _anyone_ —but just as quickly, the energy fades when he’s reminded of the itchiness of his body and just how gross he must look.

And what would he even say to them? _Hey there. Nice weather we’re having—I assume, because I haven’t bothered looking out my window in **days** , and I try not to watch the news anymore **.** Sorry about the smell, I also haven’t showered for like a week—_

Blanket draped over his shoulders, David stands by his closed door, listening to the sound of their fading footsteps as they exit down the stairway and doing absolutely nothing to stop them. It’s only when he can’t hear them anymore that he bothers to look at what they left him.

Picking the piece of paper up off the ground—a handwritten flyer for some kind of party—elegantly curly font stares back at him in bold, bright blue.

**_Farewell to Life Celebration!_ **

_Huh._

 

* * *

 

The air in his apartment feels stale, the taste of misery and self-loathing on every breath he takes, but David knows if he opens his windows now, he wouldn’t be letting in fresh air, but rather the stench of death lingering outside. He settles for a generous amount of Febreze—the scent of _Fresh Cut Pine_ the label declares—but the smell is so very obviously manufactured forest in a can, it depresses him more than anything.

Hands braced against the sink and wet hair sticking to his forehead, David meets his reflection’s dead-eyed stare in the bathroom mirror. He looks paler than usual; a ghost of his former self. The dark circles under his eyes certainly have gotten bigger—which somehow seems impossible given how much he’s been sleeping these days—and there are definitely more stress lines there than there had been before.

Heck, even his freckles look washed-out, but maybe it’s all just the bathroom lighting.

“Everything is fine,” he says out loud.

The words come out flat; unconvincing even to himself.

Exhaling slowly, David counts to five in his head and tries again, this time with a bit more pep to his pitch, and he forces his mouth to turn up at the corners into some semblance of a smile. What was that saying—that you can hear a smile in someone’s voice even when you can’t see their face?

“Everything is fine.”

A little better, but still not quite there. David had spent one summer working for a call center when he was a teen though, and the job had given him a lot of practice at adjusting his voice into that of a happy, happy, _happy_ customer service representative. He uses every bit of that training and experience now, forcing down all feelings of _everything is horrible-terrible-awful_ until not a trace of it remains in his tone.

“Everything. Is. Fine!”

Teeth grit into a too wide smile, each word injected with synthetic optimism.

There.

That’s it.

That’s the sort of positivity-on-crack pitch he’d been looking for.

‘ _Fake it until it’s real.’_

It’s practically his family motto; or at least it had been, up until everyone di—

“You’re a mess,” he announces to his reflection, still smiling, still with that jubilant tone to his voice. “But you’re _working_ on it, and that’s what’s important.”

Clapping his hands together, David mentally lists off everything he’s accomplished so far for the day, because when you’re having a down-day, it’s important to acknowledge even the smallest achievements.

_‘Okay, you’ve gotten out of bed. You’ve eaten. You’ve taken a shower even though you didn’t really want to.’_

He didn’t shave, but the red stubble dusting his face could barely pass for a five o’clock shadow. Despite being nineteen—wait, no, twenty now—he’s never had much luck when it comes to facial hair. David’s pretty sure if he put off shaving for a year, he still wouldn’t even have a beard. In this case, that works out in his favor, since he can’t really be bothered to put in the effort with his electric razor anyway. Usually he prefers the clean-shaved look, or at least he does when he’s in a healthy mindset, but as it is, the extra scruff doesn’t look too terrible. It’s a bit patchy and it adds to his overall unkempt look, but not in an unwashed sort of way, which is what’s important, he supposes.

 _‘Still, that’s good. You’re doing a good job,’_ he tells himself, because thinking positively leads to positive emotions—

_Fake it until it’s real._

_Fake it until it’s real._

“All that’s left to do now is get dressed and… leave my apartment,” he says cheerfully, still speaking to his reflection. “Which is something that you are fully capable of!”

Yes. No problems there. He just needs to open his door and step out into the hall, take the stairs down to the first floor—not at all due to the fact that the elevator could stop working at any time, but because it’s _healthier_ —go unlock his bike from the racks and then exit out the front lobby onto West 3rd Street, where there may or may not be a dead body or two laid out on the sidewalk and covered with a bedsheet. Totally not a big deal though, just, y’know, the _‘new normal’_ these days; certainly nothing to get upset over, and isn’t it nice that someone went to the effort of covering the bodies with a sheet in the first place?

“Everybody dies,” his reflection says, smiling, happy, _bright._ “Sooner rather than later now. And it’s not like you knew who they were anyway.”

“Excellent point,” David says, definitely not clenching his teeth together to keep whatever stability he has left from spilling out of his mouth in an explosion of emotions, and tears, and screaming, and bile.

 _‘Farewell to Life Celebration!’_ the flyer gleefully reminds him, stars and exclamation points dancing around its words.

David ruffles a hand through damp, red locks, spraying tiny water droplets against the mirror and on the crinkled piece of paper propped up awkwardly behind the sink faucet. Blue words slowly bleed out as the water soaks in; not enough to make the flyer illegible, but enough for the letters in the heading to blur together in a way that’s vaguely off-putting for reasons he can’t quite understand.

Absently, he wonders if the unknown messenger had slipped flyers under all of his neighbors’ doors, or if they had only given one to him because they could hear his TV playing. The thought briefly crosses his mind that maybe he could convince one of his neighbors to go with him—because having a buddy would make venturing outside a whole lot easier—before it occurs to David in the form of a ringing silence that he hasn’t actually _heard_ from any of his neighbors in a while, not even the faint shuffling sound of movement.

The walls of his apartment have always been pretty thin, and the older couple next door had a tendency to argue. It never got past the point where David felt like he needed to call the police, but there have been a few times where he’d needed to turn the volume up on his TV or play music to drown them out. The fact that he can’t hear even the slightest noise coming through the walls now is…

The smile fades from his face as he watches the ink on the flyer spread.

“I’m sure they’re fine.”

Just like the Mrs. Frankson down the hall is probably fine, and Elizabeth in the apartment across from him is fine, and Mr. Hennesy with his little dog Jimbo, and Ms. Delanie with her six cats, and the Spinelli family, and Abigail, and Ms. Roberts, and—

“Fine. Everyone is doing just fine.”

Or they left. A lot of people have been leaving lately, going to see family or traveling to somewhere a bit less populated, thinking they’ll be safer from the virus.

In the beginning of this all, when David had more good days than bad and actually had the energy to get up and get moving, he would go around and knock on their doors, just to check up on everyone and see if any of them needed anything. For that first month or so, most of them would speak to him through their doors, tell him _thank you_ but they’d prefer not to open up; completely understandable during a pandemic, not that anyone had been calling it that at the time.

As the weeks went by though, they answered his knocking less and less, and David stopped checking in as often in favor of staying in his bed for longer periods of time until finally his neighbors had… _no longer been in need of his assistance._ Which is also fine. People needed their privacy and alone time, after all, and David’s big enough to admit that—in his current state of mind—he’s not really capable of being much help to anyone.

He’d still been able to hear them though.

_‘When did I stop hearing them?’_

Far in the back of his mind, David has a fleeting, unwanted thought, one that he refuses to acknowledge.

_‘How long have I been alone in this apartment complex?’_

“They’re fine.” He reiterates, staring down at the flyer.

‘ _FREE Food, Drinks, and Good Company!’_ the flyer promises with abundant enthusiasm. ‘ _The end may be near, but there’s no reason you have to face it alone. We’ve decided there’s no shame in ending the apocalypse on a high note ( ~~LOL, HIGH!~~ ), so join us Tuesday night as we exit this planet together!’_

Sounds… cheerful. A positive way of looking at everything that’s been happening, and David could use some extra positivity in his life from an outside source.

_‘There will be people there.’_

Real, living people who he can talk to and interact with, not to mention that this is as good of an opportunity as any to get himself back out in the world, ~~or what’s left of it.~~

Breathe in for four seconds, hold for seven, exhale for eight.

He looks back up at the mirror.

‘ _Alright now, big smiles for real this time. You are fine. You are great. You are doing just swell!’_

Good. Better. Or at least a better smile than before.

“Everything is fine.”

Teal green eyes shine with a certain kind of wetness.

“This is just a setback.”

Time to hunt down some clothes that are at least _moderately_ clean.

 

* * *

_TBC_

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this story is going to be longer than I originally anticipated, and forget what I said before about this story only being in 3 parts. This thing's going to have as many chapters as it needs to have. I can at least say that it won't be as insanely long as my ongoing R&M fic, but it will be longer than 20K. 
> 
> I need to warn you right now though that I'm an extremely slow writer, so updates will unfortunately not be frequent. 
> 
>  
> 
> **Chapter Warnings: LOTS of talk about suicide. Also a more detailed description of what the virus does to people.**

**Unspoken Lifelines**

_Chapter 2_

Farewell to Life Celebration.

The name should’ve be a tip-off—if not the wording of the flyer itself—and as David stands there in front of the welcome table writing his information down on a piece of cardstock like he’s writing his own obituary, he thinks that maybe somewhere deep down, he’d known exactly what sort of party this was from the very beginning. The fact that he didn’t turn right around and leave the moment he read the chalkboard sign propped up on an easel by the hotel’s front entrance speaks for itself.

_The end of life deserves as much beauty, care, and respect as the beginning._

_Welcome to your next great adventure!_

Name. Age. Date of birth. Place of birth. Some space for a little blurb about himself. David can’t help but think that if the world wasn’t essentially ending, he’d be a little concerned about his identity being stolen. As it is though, the information the card asks for is all pretty basic; nothing that you wouldn’t find on your standard intake form. At least, that’s what he thinks until he flips the card over and reads the two questions printed on the back.

_~ What is one item from your bucket list you wish you could have completed?_

_~ Were you not dying tonight, how did you always think you’d die?_

“It’s a conversation starter,” the woman sitting behind the table says. She flashes him a bright smile, her piercing blue eyes staring up at him through bleach blonde bangs in a way that’s mildly unsettling, although it could just be the context of this entire party that’s putting him on edge. Stuck to the front of her shirt, directly over her heart, is your standard ‘ _Hello my name is’_ sticker, followed by ‘ _Jen’_ written in black sharpie, and the loopy way she wrote those three letters matches the handwriting on the flyer that had been slipped under his door almost exactly.

Suddenly the air feels a bit too thin, and a vague sense of regret begins to stir somewhere inside his chest, beneath his ribcage, this feeling that he’s made a mistake. David’s not quite sure what kind of expression he has on his face, but whatever it is, it makes Jen’s smile fade into a look of practiced sympathy. 

“Some find the card therapeutic,” she offers with a shrug, “but you don’t have to fill it out if you don’t want to.”

There are people standing on either side of him filling out their own cards, throwing him curious glances and not looking at all bothered by the morbid questions—because apparently they came here with the intention of this night being their last, whereas David just wanted to socialize.

His shoulders hunch up to his ears at the unwanted attention, green eyes dropping back down to the card as he puts pen to paper and sputters out a quick, “N-no, no, it’s fine.”

Writing his answer down for the first question, David starts it off like he’s stalling, slowly scrawling out the words ‘ _One item from my bucket list:’_ and hoping that the rest will work itself out on its own. Despite multiple depressive episodes and your typical teenage angst, he’s never really thought in terms of buckets lists before. In fact, so much of his childhood has involved denial and avoidance tactics when it came to the subject of death, even when it’s staring him right in the face—

_A small broken body at the bottom of a cliff._

_An obituary hidden in a shoebox under his mom’s bed._

_An intentional car wreck and cremation ashes sprinkled along a mountain road._

David’s hand trembles around the pen, his teeth clenching unconsciously as the images flicker briefly at the back of his mind; intrusive mental ghosts calling out to him from a locked box. He pushes them back in the same way he always does, going through a well-practiced mental checklist.

Step one is to breathe and tell yourself that _it’s fine, everything’s fine._

Step two is loosening your jaw because— _stop it—_ that’s bad for your teeth.

Step three is to smile, always smile, and resume normal, everyday functions.

Blurred vision focuses back down on the card.

_‘One item from my ~~nonexistent~~ bucket list.’_

It’s not even like he needs to be truthful. He could put anything down and no one would know the difference. Go skydiving, climb Mount Everest; that’s what people normally went with, right? Or he could just pick something he’s seen in a movie. Will Smith smoked a cigar in _Independence Day_. Those violinists in _Titanic_ played one last song—oh, but don’t think about _Titanic_ because that movie always makes him cry.

Just as David starts to write down something about his guitar, taking his cue from _Titanic_ , the answer comes to him—not something he’s ever thought of as a thing to do before he dies, but something he’s always wanted to do in general—and he can’t believe he didn’t think of the idea before.

            _Visit as many National Parks as possible._

There are 59 different parks in the United States alone, not to mention all the parks he’d still be able to get to in Mexico and Canada even with air travel down. Yellowstone, Acadia, the Canadian Rockies, the Redwood Forest; he wants to see them all, wants to trek across deserts and through forests and up mountain ranges, experience nature first-hand in all its varied glory. Hear wolves howling in the night, the sharp cry of a falcon, the soothing chirp of crickets, and the forest song of a hundred different birds, witness deer and elk and moose and wild horses, listen to the rush of white water rapids, of a waterfall over a cliffside, and crashing waves against a sandy shore— _everything,_ he wants to see and hear and feel _everything_ that mother nature has to offer.

He… he could still do that. He has time.

It might be a little difficult getting started considering that he doesn’t have a car and all public transport seems to be down, but David’s sure he could figure something out. He’s not old enough to rent a car, but maybe he could put up a flyer asking for a traveling companion. A lot of people have been doing that lately, putting up flyers that skip past the usual social niceties and bluntly advertise exactly what they’re looking for, like a real-life _Craigslist._

In terms of goals though, it’s certainly doable.

All the wildlife will probably be dead or dying, sure, and going somewhere to experience the joys of nature only to find yourself in the middle of an animal graveyard kind of puts a damper on the whole thing— _but the trees and the mountains and the rivers will still be there._ It’s worth it enough for that, isn’t it?

Chewing on his lower lip, David moves on to the next question

_Were you not dying tonight—_

His eyes skip past the first half of the question. It’s too much of an abstract concept to him— _dying **tonight**_ —like it’s just a story someone’s telling him, something they heard about through a friend of a friend, and not at all a very real event that could be happening in a matter of hours, ~~one that David might even take part in—~~

No. Stop.

Inhale. Exhale. Relax your jaw. Smile.

He’s just here to socialize. That’s what he tells himself. When he left his apartment today, it was with the intentions of enjoying the company of other human beings, maybe eat some food that’s catered and didn’t come out of a box, and then go home afterwards. That’s still the plan.

It is.

The alternative is not an option to be considered.

_—how had you always suspected you’d die?_

David decides to approach the question like a thought experiment, a hypothetical, not something to actually be taken seriously. He’s reminded of so many inane conversations he’s had with classmates in the past. Things like ‘ _who would win in a fight between character A and character B? If you had to eat the same thing for the rest of your life, what would you pick? If your house was on fire and you only had time to grab three items, what would they be?’_

See? It’s all in good fun, just a way to pass the time with harmless, random nonsense.

Handwritten loopy letters stare up at David in wait. On either side of him, more and more people come and go, writing down their own answers without hesitation and exchanging their cards for blank name badges to fill in.

‘ _Were you not dying tonight—’_

_Were you not **killing yourself**_ _tonight—_

_‘—how had you always suspected you’d die?’_

A spot of ink bleeds into the card from where he holds the pen still for too long.

_How had you always suspected—_

_How had you always secretly thought—_

_How—_

_How will you die?_

_‘Exactly like this.’_

The answer lingers in the back of his mind, morbid and invasive, yet with so many emotional strings knotted up in it—that despite all his promises, he’d have a down day, a really, _really_ bad down day where depression would get the best of him in the same way it had his mom. What was happening tonight wasn’t all that different, was it? The details and the circumstances leading up to it are not at all what he would have imagined, but the end results are the same, when you really think about it.

Suicide.

It’s not what he writes down though. As much as David can admit that the thought had probably always been there, buried somewhere deep, the truth of its unwanted inevitability is not something he wants to memorialize on paper, and it’s _not_ going to be something that he’ll be doing tonight.

He swears on it. He always does.

In the end, he goes the way of logic. Being a bike rider in a busy city could be pretty dangerous. When you take that into consideration, the answer is quite simple.

_‘Hit by a car.’_

Short but sweet, and not at all overly personal.

Jen smiles up at him when he drops his completed notecard into the respective decorated shoebox alongside all the others. It doesn’t feel like an accomplishment though, finishing the card. If anything, he feels stripped raw—not necessarily from the answers he put down, but just from having to think about the questions in general—and as Jen slides a blank nametag sticker and a sharpie across the table to him, suddenly the idea of transparency makes David deeply uncomfortable.

He just needs some kind of barrier to put up between him and everyone else, something that will get him through the night without completely shutting out everyone around him. He is here to socialize after all.

Popping the cap off the sharpie, he writes down _Cameron_ instead of _David._ It’s pointlessly stupid, considering that he wrote down his actual name on the notecard, but a fake name is all he can really come up with in these few faltering seconds, and David has to admit, he does feel marginally better after the fact.

Jen’s eyes fall very pointedly on the nametag when he hands the marker back to her, and David has to wonder if she’s noticed the discrepancy, considering how long he stood in front of her filling out his card. She doesn’t say a word about it though, and she doesn’t stop smiling, not even when David beats a hasty retreat through the glass double-doors into the main reception hall just to get away from her.

 

* * *

 

 For something that is very clearly a suicide party—because that’s what this is, there’s no sugarcoating it—the venue is impressive. Whoever organized this whole thing had commandeered the hotel’s indoor courtyard, and even before they’d put up decorations, it’s easy to see the place is beautiful all on its own. Beneath an expansive glass ceiling, mosaic tile walkways weave around trees and flowers and shrubbery, leading out into a rather large dining area at the center of it all, complete with enough tables and chairs to seat what could easily be fifty people.

It’s sort of like a cross between a ballroom and a greenhouse; nature intermingling with the kind of interior architecture you’d expect from a mansion and absolutely none of the winter weather. The decorations are just glitz and glam added on to it all—a canopy of glittering fairy lights spanning the length of the courtyard with white paper lanterns and white balloons netted among them.

Actually… there was a lot of white involved with the decorations. White tablecloths, white ribbons, white chairs, white floral arrangements. It’s an—uh, _interesting_ choice given the purpose of the party, but he’ll admit that the way the lights bathe all that white in a golden glow makes the whole space feel rather warm and inviting. He can understand the reasoning behind it. There’s just something calming and comforting about it all—almost reminiscent to morning light over freshly fallen snow—which isn’t to say it gets rid of David’s anxiety about the party _completely,_ but it certainly helps.

He lingers on the fringes of the dining area, next to a large potted plant and opposite from the buffet table where most of the crowd has gathered. He’ll dive in with his usual social enthusiasm eventually, he swears, but for now, he just needs a minute to get his bearings, maybe feel out the general mood of everyone else here.

The chatter going on around him sounds as nervous as it does optimistic. Overall though, everyone seems pretty content with what they’re doing here tonight, and David can’t help but feel like the odd man out in that sense.

At least he’s not the only one underdressed, which is saying something considering that the cleanest thing he could find was a pair of sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt from his last summer at camp, not to mention the winter jacket he got from Goodwill that has seen better days. There are people here wearing flannel pajamas and blanket ponchos though. Balance that out with the ten or so people wearing tuxes and ballgowns and they all make quite the eclectic mix. There’s even someone in a full fursuit who seems to be getting a lot of compliments about their outfit. Funny how people stop caring about social standards when faced with a world ending event— _possible_ world ending event, he means.

_Relax. Keep smiling. Everything is fine._

Nervously fiddling with his jacket zipper, David distracts himself by counting the number of people that are here so far. Twenty-eight with more still arriving. It should be shocking, that thirty-something people have shown up here tonight with the intention of dying—that they all got the same flyer David did and thought, ‘ _A death party? Hmm, sounds like a good idea’—_ but from what David has heard on the news, dying from the virus is…

_Unpleasant_ is one way of wording it.

There are your typical staples of any bad ailment; fever, chills, body aches, fatigue. That and a cough is how it all starts off, and then it all just rapidly gets worse and worse from there until… well, _until._

It’s sort of like the virus flips a switch in your whole body and everything stops working the way it should, making it seem like someone’s contracted a dozen different diseases all at the same time, except in this case the usual treatments don’t work. Antibodies get reprogrammed to attack each other instead of the virus, your body stops making the necessary fluids it needs to function. Like your lungs. Your lungs, in a sense, dry out—that’s always the first major thing to go wrong—and what was once good mucus is now a thick, tar-like coating.

Your stomach is the next thing to fail you. That protective lining thins and deteriorates until the digestive acids just eat right through it.

Following that… is the systematic collapse of your entire circulatory system. That’s the final stage of it all, assuming someone even survives long enough to reach it, and David fully regrets taking that anatomy class last semester, if only because he could have gone without the mental visuals as to what that even means. The same thing that happened to your stomach essentially happens to your blood vessels; all those thin, delicate layers eroded away like a rusty pipe.  

So just—there’s bleeding. Lots and lots of bleeding, because where else can all that blood go when there’s nothing to hold it all in?

They’re not details David has ever wanted to know. He would have been perfectly fine with only knowing that people are dying from some kind of viral outbreak and leaving it at that. Even in the face of certain doom though, the news will forever and always be into sensationalism.

It’s for this reason that David does his very best not to listen to it anymore, and it’s also why he feels assured that things are not as bad as they seem.

People are dying—he’s not denying that—and the way they’re dying is undoubtedly terrible, but it’s terrible in the same way the bubonic plague had been terrible, and the Spanish flu, and small pox, and so many other deadly pandemics throughout history. All of them had been bad, and all of them had killed _a lot_ of people, but they hadn’t wiped out humanity back then despite having no real cure at the time, and this viral outbreak will be no different. Scientists and doctors will figure out some form of a treatment just like they do for everything else. The world will clean-up, recover, and eventually move on.

This is not where it all ends.

That said, David can understand why the people at this party are looking for a quick and easy way out, especially if they know they’re already infected. What the virus does to you—nobody wants to die that way, and looking around at everyone, it’s easy to see that some of these people are in fact sick. For the ones that look to be healthy, well, fear can be a pretty strong motivator in these types of situations.

David likes to think that at least some of them are just here for moral support though.

When it seems like the last of the crowd has filtered into the courtyard, the party host shows up soon after; a man dressed in a white suit with grey accents and a light blue undershirt. He stands just slightly above the crowd on the steps of the courtyard’s gazebo, the blonde woman from the welcome table by his side with a clipboard in hand. The similarities between them are so close that David has to wonder if they’re twins.  

Smiling down at the crowd with a sense of confidence about him that David could never hope to achieve, the man twirls the cord of a microphone around long fingers and cheerfully introduces himself as Daniel. He starts off by welcoming everyone to the party and sharing a bit of background information about himself—grew up in Virginia with three brothers and five sisters ( _“Haha, yes, you could say I came from quite the big family!”_ ), then later went on to become a freelance accountant for various non-profits, and has been moving all over the country doing that for the past three years now.

When introductions are done, Daniel moves on to why everyone’s here tonight, and David really has to hand it to the man, he’s charmingly charismatic with his clean-cut platinum blonde hair and relaxed smile. He talks of faith and belief and the afterlife, but does it in a way that’s genuine and not at all creepy or off-putting, which is how David normally feels when such subjects are brought up.

“Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Muslim, Wiccan, spirituality and so many more,” Daniel casually lists off. “We all have our own belief systems, things that have set humanity apart for centuries—”

Some people just have a way with words. They excel at public speaking and can inspire others in even the worst situations. Daniel, it would seem, is one of these people.

“—but here and now, there is one thing I think we can all agree on: our own inevitable mortality.”

Scattered nervous laughter sweeps across the room. For anyone else, it would be a conversation killer, but for Daniel, he plows through the tension without abandon, cutting straight down to the root of his audience’s discomfort and applying a balm for the pain. What’s the saying? You have to hurt before you can heal?

“Regardless of what religion you follow or what you believe the afterlife to be, this virus is going to wipe us all out without prejudice, and it’ll be sooner rather than later. That’s why we’ve all gathered here tonight; to both celebrate what our lives have been, and to take our fates into our own hands!”

Perhaps if this had been a month or two ago, people would have been warier of such talk. When this whole thing first began, the general consensus was what David mostly still believes to this day, that things aren’t as bad as everyone’s making it out to be.  Some people had even taken it a step further than that by insisting that there was no virus, or that getting sick wasn’t something that would ever happen to them, because _‘people die from the flu every year and no one’s calling **that** a pandemic!’_

That insistence has since faded—right along with the general population it seems—and opinions on the outcome of this all have soured into something a bit more cynical. Although they’re not sentiments David agrees with, he can sympathize with where such abysmal perspectives come from. It’s hard to stay positive when people you know are dying and everyone around you is crying out omens of doom and gloom and the end of all life on earth.

Not everyone has his ability to look on the brighter side of things.

Admittedly, that ability has taken a bit of a hit due to his most recent depressive episode, but David’s sure he’ll bounce back to normal like always. He just has to keep reminding himself that this feeling of hopelessness is temporary, and any dark thoughts he may have is just the chemical imbalance in his brain talking.

Yup. That’s all this is.

“I know a lot of you are nervous, scared—heck, I’m a little scared too,” Daniel says gently, hand over his heart. Before the mood in the room can drop back down too low though, his tone picks back up into something with a bit more pep. “That’s why we have specially prepared some refreshments that will relax the nerves before the Main Event!”

He gestures over to the buffet table with all the enthusiasm of an infomercial spokesperson.

 “Cookies baked with a little bit of Molly are available at the buffet table along with some other _special_ treats to choose from. Help yourself—”

Molly—ecstasy.

He’s starting to understand the ‘high’ joke on the flyer, between that and the emphasis on the word ‘special.’

“—and then later, when the celebrations are done, we’ll be passing out drinks to finish up the night with. It’s my own very special recipe; a little bit of Oxy, a little bit of liquid sugar along with some stuff that’s _extremely_ fast-acting. It’ll be just like going to sleep, hence the hotel. All the rooms have been unlocked for your leisure. We want to be comfy, don’t we? Trust me, you’ll love it!”

Slipping away into a forever dream. That’s how most people want to go, isn’t it? Peaceful. Calm. Just close your eyes and it’s over.

Daniel speaks of it all so lightly. No big deal, right? Like everyone’s just here to board a plane and take a trip.

“Annnd, of course,” Daniel says, wrapping up his speech, “I just need to add my quick little disclaimer that no one’s forcing you to be here if you don’t want to be, and you’re free to leave at any time.” He chuckles lightly and the crowd laughs with him.  “That said, let’s party!”

 

* * *

 

A small paper plate holding a single untouched cupcake trembles oh-so-slightly in David’s hands.

It’s nice, he’s decided—uplifting even—that these people can find a way of comforting themselves during these trying times. For them, a death party isn’t so much about giving up as it is accepting what they believe to be their reality, and David can respect that.

Dying with dignity.

That’s what it had been called back before this all started, when people were still debating about whether or not someone with, say, a terminal brain tumor should be allowed the right to have a doctor assist them with suicide.

What Daniel’s doing here isn’t really all that different, and David’s always been a firm believer in everyone getting a choice about what happens in their own lives.

No matter how much that choice may hurt…

He just wishes it wasn’t the only thing that was being talked about.

The virus. The people that have been lost. These are not conversations he wants to be having. They’re not things he wants to be talking about. Death, and bucket lists, and missed opportunities. David doesn’t know how they can all talk about it so casually.

Do they simply find comfort in their own mutually assured destruction, so sure that whatever suffering they may have will not extend beyond tonight?

_‘What am I still doing here?’_

He’d been so excited to come to this thing, and suddenly it’s like he’s forgotten how to socialize. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t talked to another person in so long, or maybe the theme of the party is throwing him off, but as he stands there among the crowd, his brain powers down into isolation mode and he can’t think of a single thing to say to anyone. He used to be so good at this, could walk up to any stranger and strike up a conversation with ease, and now all he can do is stand here awkwardly and try to fish words out of the blank void that is his mind and attempt to string them together into coherent sentences.

What do you say to someone who’s holding a handkerchief to their mouth to catch all the blood that’s trickling past their lips?

David’s eyes drift down to the cupcake on his plate, the small but welcoming smile he’d kept forced onto his face for the past half hour wavering. He presses the pad of one finger down into the frosting and wonders if the glittery substance dusting it is just fancy sugar or something of a more narcotic variety. There hadn’t exactly been ‘special’ ingredients labels at the buffet table.

His first roommate had been into experimenting with a lot of different drugs, but it’s nothing David had ever wanted to try. He’d read enough cautionary tales online to know that it wouldn’t have mixed well with his medication, and the last thing he had needed during his first semester at college was a drug-induced full-blown manic episode.

The thought is tempting now though. He’s been off his prescriptions for so long, a part of him wonders if maybe it would actually help—like maybe his brain chemistry is so messed up right now that it would balance him out.

Digging his finger down deeper into spongey yellow cake, David tears off a chunk and squashes it flat against the paper plate. It occurs to him absentmindedly that he’s doing that thing again—clenching his teeth.

“Not a cupcake person?”

Said cupcake falls to the ground after a fumbling attempt on David’s part to keep it on the plate. It lands frosting-side down of course, but maybe that’s for the best. After a moment’s hesitation, he drops the paper plate down on top of it as well. By the end of the night, this place is going to be full of dead bodies anyway, so what’s one more mess?

“Sorry,” it’s the host, Daniel. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you like that.”

David turns to him warily—not because he doesn’t want to talk to the man, he’d welcome a conversation with anyone at this point—but Daniel’s the one who organized this _happy_ little shindig. What else could someone who put together an honest-to-god suicide party want to talk about?

Daniel had been making his rounds with the other party-goers all night though, talking to everyone, smoothing down any frayed nerves or ruffled feathers from the looks of it. David’s closed-off body language and too-tight smiles made him stick out like a sore thumb; it was only a matter of time before the blonde spotted him.

“Here by yourself tonight?”

The question is an innocent one, your basic conversation-starter even if it does sound a bit like a pick-up line, and Daniel certainly means well enough if his relaxed smile is anything to go by, but for David, it sours something inside him. The words bounce around his head like an echo-chamber—here by yourself, _by yourself—_ and it sets off this miserable downward-spiral domino effect.

He thinks first of his neighbors, of wanting to invite one of them to this thing except he couldn’t because they all, they—they _left_ , fled to someplace safer, _he’s sure—_ but now his entire apartment complex is empty and maybe it’s just a _little_ unsettling, being there completely alone.

And there it is. That word. Alone.

Alone. Alone. _Alone._

Which leads into thoughts of past roommates and friends from school, how the last time he got a call from any of them was over a month ago. That’s his own fault though, definitely nothing to do with the virus, he just wasn’t all that diligent about picking up the phone. And David gets it, y’know? He’s not exactly fun to be around when he’s like this. A couple of lackluster conversations mixed in with some ignored phone calls would make anyone stop trying.

You see, it’s all very easily explained. No reason at all to think the worst, right?

His family though.

His family…

There’s no alleviating what happened there. Phone call after phone call in between failing cell service, relatives reporting other relatives’ deaths in the multiples every few days— _he’s gone, she’s gone, they’re gone, they’re all gone, I think I’m next, Davey, there’s not much time now, I’m sorry_ —until there was no one left to pick up.

Are his eyes tearing up? Because they kind of feel like they’re burning.

“Yeah, um—” David clears his throat. He has no idea what sort of face he’s making, but he knows it’s nothing close to happy or cheerful. “Yeah, I’m here by myself tonight.”

He tries so hard to put a smile back on his face, but he just can’t manage it.

Daniel looks immediately taken-aback.

“Gosh, I’m sorry,” Daniel says, one hand hovering up like he wants to comfort David, but doesn’t know if it will be welcome. “I’m told that I can be bluntly obtuse at times, with a tendency of sticking my foot in my mouth. It’s a shortcoming I’m not proud of.”

The blonde explains this all with a self-depreciating smile, but David feels like he should be the one apologizing. He hadn’t meant to get his emotions all over the place.

“No, no, it’s alright,” David says, shaking his head. He takes a quick, shuddering breath, pushes himself to use that perky, positive voice he’s usually so good at, “It just still feels fresh, even though it’s been a few months.”

This time, Daniel does rest his hand on David’s shoulder; it’s a gentle, consoling pressure.

“Grief doesn’t follow any kind of timeline,” Daniel points out rather reasonably, and after a pause in which David gives no verbal response, he asks, “You were close, I assume?”

Tight-lipped and with green eyes drifting down to the dropped cupcake, David nods.

“Do you mind my asking who?” Daniel says, his hand dropping away. “It can help to talk about it.”

Somehow, David doesn’t feel like it would—in his experience, these things are better left buried—despite himself though, he answers.

“Just… family.”

All of them. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins and their kids who were practically nieces and nephews to him. The virus spread through David’s family tree with such a rapid efficiency, infecting every branch. They were among the first groups to go too, a period of only three and a half weeks between the first death of his Aunt Sheila and the last death of his cousin, Matt, until…

David is not the lynchpin of his family by any means. He could have been one of the one’s to go in that first week, and while his relatives would have been sad, they’d have no problems moving forward without him; just another name scratched off the list. He may always be invited to every big family gathering, and he gets various holiday cards in the mail throughout the year, but none of them have ever truly relied on him or needed him in any significant way. After his mom’s death, David’s pretty sure if he’d decided to stop talking to them entirely, none of them would have put up a fight about it either.

His point is that there’s no grand reason for him to be last. He’s not that important. He never was.

So then why is he still here, long after they’ve all passed?

How is that fair?

“No big deal,” David forces a laugh, waves it off. “I mean, everyone’s lost someone at this point, right?”

“It is why a lot of us are here tonight,” Daniel concedes.

Right. Here for the—the suicide party. David hadn’t thought this conversation could get any grimmer than it already is, but here they are.   

“Are you religious, Cameron?”

He can’t decide what throws him off more, being called ‘Cameron,’ or a question about religion.

“Not… especially.”

He flounders to come up with, well, anything at all to say on the matter. He doesn’t exactly come from a religious background, and quite frankly, David has always felt pretty awkward whenever the subject is brought up. 

“Maybe a little spiritual,” is what he finally settles for, though even saying that is stretching it a bit. “There’s not really… a label I’d say I fit under.”

It’s not that he has a problem with religion or anything, but when you grow up with a mother who drags you to the cemetery at 2AM to take pictures of ‘ghost orbs’ one week, and then the next week is blaming the power going out on bad energy in the air and not the fact that she forgot to pay the electric bill, well, from that point, a lot of religion seems like a ridiculous fairy tale, and not something David has bothered to put much thought into.

“How about you?”

He asks less out of any actual interest, and more because it’s the polite thing to do. A question for a question, because unless something’s changed over the last few months, that’s how a conversation works.

“Probably more than most people, I’ll admit.” Daniel says with a small shrug. “Though nothing in the… conventional sense. The universe is so vast, I suppose you could say that I have a hard time believing that humanity has it all figured out in terms of a higher power or the afterlife. Frankly, I find the idea of our energy—what some might call the soul—rejoining the stars after we shuffle off this mortal coil to be quite comforting.”

A different way of looking at it all, sure, but it actually does sound kind of nice—David says as much to Daniel.

“Hm, yeah,” Daniel chuckles. “I’d rather be up there than down here. I imagine things are nicer up there.”

David follows Daniel’s gaze up to the glass ceiling and far past that where he can see a few stars twinkling in the black. With so much of the power failing in the city these days, it’s much easier to see them.

It makes him think of a time so many years back, when he was a young child at summer camp, sitting in front of a bonfire surrounded on all sides by the forest, staring up at the night sky, crisp and clear and glimmering with stars. One of the camp councilors strumming at a guitar, the dirt beneath David’s palms, and Jasper’s pinky finger nudged up lightly against his own. As much as he tries to forget about that particular summer, the memory leaves him with a sense of longing. 

“You see, I put this party together because I wanted to choose the way I go out,” Daniel says, drawing David’s attention back down. “Not all the unpleasant symptoms of the virus, but rather slipping into a relaxed, painless sleep. And I figured, why do it alone? Why hide in my home, shameful and afraid and depressed just because I’d rather choose an easier way out instead of suffering through the inevitable?”

Daniel explains this all in such a pleasant, matter-of-fact way, like this whole virus thing _isn’t_ absolutely terrifying when you think about the finer details of it all. Everyone has their own ways of coping though, and David can’t deny that there’s something almost captivating about the way Daniel talks about it all. Maybe it’s just that he’s overwhelmed by having this many words spoken directly to him by another human being after so much silence. At the same time though, it must be so freeing to be so unconcerned.

“Our society places such a stigma on the whole assisted suicide thing—”

Hearing the word spoken out loud for the first time is jarring. David’s known from the moment he walked through the hotel’s front doors what so many people came here to do tonight, but up until now, no one has actually used the word— _suicide—_ and Daniel says it now with a kind of casual indifference.

“—though there’s not much of a society left, is there?”

He’s certainly not pulling any punches. David supposes that such blunt honesty is refreshing for some, but for him personally, it’s not something he’s wanted to think about in too much detail, tonight or any other night.

“When it hits you that _everyone’s_ going to die from this, it’s almost a little liberating knowing that you can choose this instead of waiting for your ticket to be punched. It’s not even a question of how many months or years from now it will happen, but rather how many days from now or weeks if you’re especially lucky—so does it really matter how it happens?”

It’s the same type of conversation that people have been having all around him, a conversation that David feels like he’s spent half the night avoiding. Hearing it all now though, David realizes that his discomfort and reluctance wasn’t because he disagreed, but rather because it makes a scary amount of sense, everything that Daniel’s talking about. Like an intrusive thought wriggling its way into David’s brain, except one that has so much sound logic to it—logic that David can’t think of a good argument against.

“There’s no vaccine,” Daniel’s saying. “There’s no one left to work on a vaccine, from what we’ve seen on the news.”

“I try not to watch the news,” David says, the words coming out as a hazy automatic response. He feels like he’s unraveling, losing his grasp, and there’s a ringing in his ears—faint but growing—that’s making it harder to think. David wonders if maybe he had tried the frosting after all and had simply just forgotten.

“Smart. You’d only stress yourself out more, watching it each day and knowing there’s nothing you can do to change any of it.”

Again, spoken with such casual indifference, like Daniel’s simply talking about the weather—the clouds are heavy-looking and precipitation is to be expected; if not snow, then definitely rain—these are facts. They are things that are going to happen one way or another. You can decide on bringing an umbrella or wearing a winter coat, but the overall outcome is not something you have any real choice in.

“Sorry, I’m being a bit of a downer, aren’t I?”

The question brings David back down just a bit, where things aren’t as fuzzy and he’s standing here in a hotel courtyard talking to Daniel—just a man in a white suit who’s no different from any other man who’s ever worn a white suit.

David stammers out a quiet, “It-it’s okay.”

“It’s really not,” Daniel insists. There’s a look of genuine concern on his face. “You’re uncomfortable, I can tell. I came over here to talk with you because you didn’t look like you were having fun, and I think I just made it worse.”

“No, no, really,” David says, waving both hands to push back the other man’s worries. The extra positive pep he forces into his voice wavers only slightly when he adds, “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

Daniel doesn’t look at all convinced. He seems to pause and study David carefully, blue eyes locked with green like he’s trying to stare into David’s soul—energy, _whatever—_ searching for something or trying to figure something out, though David can’t imagine what. Before things have a chance to get truly uncomfortable though, that charming smile of Daniel’s returns full-force and he claps a hand on David’s shoulder once more.

“Cameron,” he says decisively, his head tilting sharply to one side, “If you don’t mind my asking, what did you actually want out of all this?”

At first, David thinks he means the question in a broader sense, like what did he want in general, and of course the answer to that is obvious. He wants what everyone else wants, for a cure to be found, for this virus to have never even been a thing, for his family to be alive again. More than anything, He just wants to go back to how things had been before, when he was happy, when he was still in college and had a future to look forward to. None of that is possible though, and David realizes absently that it’s not what Daniel’s asking.

No. Daniel’s asking him about what he wants out of this party. He’s asking why David is here, why he even went to the trouble of showing up, because clearly, he’s not in the same state of mind as the rest of the attendees.

_‘To socialize,’_ is his first thought, _‘To have a conversation’—_ except now he’s not so sure. None of this has been what he wanted it to be—and yet despite that, he’d stuck around, lingering among the other party-goers like something about this all might change. So what was he looking for out of all of this? What did he really, truly want?

“A hug.”

Stunned silence falls between them. Daniel because—well, it’s probably not what he’d been expecting—and David because he’s not sure why he said that, or where the desire even came from, but yeah, more than anything, he could really just use a hug right now, just a little bit of physical comfort, because he is so, so very tired of feeling alone in this whole thing.

Before David can fully comprehend it, Daniel is pulling him in and wrapping his arms around him tight. The blonde’s body flush against his own, the warmth of another human being and the physical pressure of being held, it envelopes David in a pleasant sensory buzz; serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins all going to work. Yet at the same time, an overwhelming shiver of emotions runs through him; devastating sadness mixed with a crushing loneliness, the bliss of positive human contact followed by a wave of melancholy that this can only last so long. 

David hadn’t realized how touch-starved he’d become.

And that’s when the tears finally fall. Not a lot, not enough to be considered fully crying, but a few fat drops definitely well up in David’s eyes and slip down his face. Daniel pats a gentle hand against his back and pulls away, far too soon for David’s liking, but he understands. He’s not the only person at this party and Daniel has other things to do.

Embarrassed, he wipes away the tears, his eyes downcast, not wanting to meet Daniel’s gaze.

He does manage to say one thing though.

“It’s David.”

“Sorry?”

“My name,” David says, peeling the sticker off his shirt and hesitantly looking up into those piercing blue eyes. “It’s David, not Cameron.”

Daniel gives a happy little hum at the admission, looking as pleased as the punch Jen’s wheeling around the courtyard on a fancy drink cart.

“Well, David,” he says, gesturing for Jen to wheel the cart over to them, “it’s been so very nice to meet you—and hey, maybe I’ll get to meet you again on the other side.” Pouring out two cups of the punch with a glass ladle, Daniel holds one out to him and adds with a wink, “Your choice or course.”

After a moment’s hesitation, David accepts the offered drink—a plastic red party cup filled to the brim with a deep purple liquid—he studies it carefully, noting its strong fruity scent. _Fast acting_ , Daniel had said before, his _very own special recipe._

“It’s good, I promise,” Daniel gleefully informs him, and then he gives a carefree shrug. “Think about it.”

He leaves David to his own devices, staring down into the drink and thinking about everything the blonde had said; about no cures and making the choice of an easier ending, about how everyone in the world around him is dying, growing sick and weak and coughing up blood, and it’s only a matter of time before he joins them.

Why prolong the inevitable? Why keep fighting?

 

* * *

 

When the time finally comes, when everyone raises their own cups, David almost does drink it. He gets as far as letting the taste of grape wash over his tongue and sit stagnant in his mouth—one swallow is likely all he’d really need—before he’s struck by a sudden clarity of _exactly_ what he’s doing, what he’s let this all come to, and the sense of shame that quickly follows has him spitting the drink back out into his cup.

What stops him… it’s not any kind of burning desire to _live_ and _fight on._ That spark of passion to keep moving forward has been well and truly snuffed out of David, and he has zero expectations of it being reignited anytime soon.

No, what truly stops him from drinking whatever poison is in that cup is a melancholy memory from just a couple years back, when he was eighteen and sitting in the passenger’s seat of his uncle’s car with an urn full of his mother’s ashes resting on his lap. Her last request—buried among so many apologies and regrets—had been for her ashes to be spread along the mountain road she grew up on, and after the funeral and the wake, David’s uncle, his mother’s oldest brother, had been the one to drive him up to that road and help him say good bye for the last time.

David remembers sitting in that car, staring down at that urn full of ashes, and being so very angry at her that she had left him behind—that she didn’t do what she had always told him to do and get help when things got really bad. He remembers thinking about how he was going to have to spend the rest of his life without her, and how devastating that realization was despite how complicated their relationship had been.

More than that though, David remembers quite vividly how he sat in that car and told himself that he would _never_ do what she did, that no matter how bad things got, he swore he wouldn’t go out that way.

Now is not the time to be making exceptions, despite everything that’s happening around him.

He almost can’t believe how close he let himself slip to this point. At the same time though, this whole damn night has felt like a fever dream.

‘ _This was a mistake_ ,’ he thinks, his hand shaking as he wipes away the sugary sweet residue from his lips. ‘ _I shouldn’t have come here, this is the very last thing I need influencing me._ ’

His mouth is burning, his gums tender and inflamed. Whatever drugs or poison had been in that drink was a powerful one—but then, that’s the whole point, isn’t it?

‘ _I need to get out of here._ ’

As David slips out the nearest exit, he can only hope that rock bottom is poison in a plastic party cup. He’s not quite sure he could survive falling any further.

* * *

_TBC_

_End notes: I always felt like Daniel would be more foreboding as a cult leader and bad guy if he was more subtly manipulative._

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will never be another update as fast as this one, just warning you right now. I wasn't kidding about being a slow writer. The only reason this came out so quick is because I already had it mostly written when I finished the last chapter. The same can not be said for the next chapter. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks for the comments and kudos, guys! It really means a lot to me. I hope you enjoy this chapter just as much. 
> 
>  
> 
> **Chapter Warnings: Inebriation. A drunk David can certainly begin to accept the reality of his situation better than a sober David.**

**Unspoken Lifelines**

**_Chapter 3_ **

 

David doesn’t go home. He’s not ready to be alone just yet, so he rides his bike aimlessly down dark streets and cuts through random alleyways, hoping that he’ll run into someone; a late-night jogger maybe, or a taxi driver he could flag down. Heck, at this point, he’d welcome a mugging if it meant further human interaction. They could hold him at knifepoint and demand his wallet and David could ask them about their day.

These are not the thoughts of a healthy mind.

He knows this, knows how messed up it all is and that it’s not that much better than a suicide party, but he really just wants— _needs_ to talk to someone. Preferably someone who’s not at risk of talking David off the deep end; he’s pretty sure he can only handle that once in a twenty-four hour period.

Everywhere he goes, it’s entirely too quiet; the buzzing liveliness of the city at night snuffed out in the wake of the pandemic. Car engines and horns and the screech of brakes, wailing sirens from passing police cars and ambulances and firetrucks, the low murmur of spoken words from people milling about at all hours of the night, and even the occasional whir of helicopter rotors as they fly overhead, be it for traffic reports or to shine a spotlight down onto the streets below; it’s a soundtrack David never thought he’d miss until now. Back when he first moved here for college, it had taken months to get used to, but now that it’s all just… _gone_ , the absence is jarringly unsettling.

When he spots the lights of a nightclub, it calls out to him like a beacon of hope in a desolate wasteland, albeit one that shines in neon pink and purple with the glowing outlined silhouette of a woman draped over the words _Pink Fox Pop._ It’s exactly the sort of place David would never go to, but the implied promise of another human life tucked away somewhere behind those gaudy pink and chrome doors draws him in like a bug zapper. Cranking down on the handbrakes and skidding to a precarious stop, he barely even takes the time to pop the kickstand before he’s ditching his bike on the sidewalk and plowing his way through the front door.

David’s never been to a bar before, much less a nightclub as suspect as this one, but he’s seen enough TV shows and movies to know what they’re supposed to be like. Strobing lights, loud music, the unintelligible din of people laughing and talking and shouting to be heard.

What he walks into is a quiet, empty dance floor lit by dim, pink lights. There are booths to sit down at tucked off to the sides, and a bar set up at the back end of the club, but there’s nobody else here aside from David. It’s all the splendor you’d expect from a nightclub, but with none of the life. Just a dead butterfly pinned to a board; pretty but kind of depressing.

Or at least that’s what David thinks until he hears a glass break and a muffled voice spewing out a number of colorful swears.

The man tending bar is wearing a full-face gas mask like something straight off of a Neurofunk album cover. He’s paired it with a red hoodie and two thick, black rubber gloves.

He also may or may not be some random dude off the street who decided to break into an empty nightclub, stand behind the bar and serve drinks to anyone who walks by—David thinks this mostly because the guy doesn’t seem to know where anything is behind the bar and he fumbles around for a good three minutes trying to find a jar of cherries—but he makes a mean Shirley Temple and he’s an actual _real, live person_ to talk to, so David doesn’t question him on it.

He does question the man on his choice in apocalyptic headgear though; not so much because he’s actually curious, but because it seems like a good conversation starter.

“Isn’t that, uh… overkill?” he asks, gesturing at the mask with his drinking straw. He pauses, waits for a response, and when the other man doesn’t say anything, David fumbles to correct himself, because maybe _‘overkill’_ was the wrong word to use, given the circumstances. “I—I mean, does it actually help?”

The lenses on the mask are an opaque green, so it’s impossible to read any kind of expression on the man’s face, but when he shrugs his shoulders and speaks, his filtered words don’t sound too bothered by David’s remark.

 “I’m still here, ain’t I?”

It’s a good point, and it feels like that should be the end of the conversation, but David’s not done talking yet, so he goes on to say, “Most people just go with a hospital mask.”

“Yeah,” the bartender drawls, “and most people are dead now.”

David’s eyes drop down to his drink, searching for something else to say. He distracts himself with trying to fish the cherry out of the glass with just his straw, a task that’s apparently a lot easier when you don’t have a bunch of ice to navigate through. The quiet murmur of a radio playing in the background fills the silence, but does nothing about the awkwardness of it all.  

Why has he been having so much trouble talking to people tonight? What’s wrong with him?

David pops the cherry into his mouth, beating his previous record by a good fifteen seconds, and looks back up at the man. He decides to go with something a bit simpler, introductions and exchanging names.

Stupid. He should have started with that.

“So, what’s your name? I can’t just keep calling you ‘gasmask guy’ in my head.”

“You most certainly can,” the man says, setting down the glass he’d been cleaning with a hard _clink._ “I’ve been referring to you as ‘Red’ in my mind.”

“Oo-kay then… gasmask guy,” David bites his lip, drums his fingers against the bar top. He glances back in the direction of the door, “Maybe, um—I should just go.”

His need for social contact is quickly being overridden by a general feeling of anxiety over how badly this conversation is going—which is ridiculous because that kind of sounds like ‘social anxiety,’ and David doesn’t _get_ social anxiety. He gets manic or depressed and everything that goes along with those two extremes, but he’s _always_ been good with people.

Maybe he’s just a bit rusty. He has been shut up in his apartment for a while.

“It’s Kevin,” the bartender says, drawing David’s attention back over to him in a snap.

He’s probably just humoring David, throwing him a bone, and it might not even be his real name, but that doesn’t stop the genuine smile from stretching across David’s face. Before David can even draw in a breath to respond though, the man—Kevin—points a quick finger at him and says, “Don’t you go telling me your name though, Red. I don’t wanna be making connections with people who are gonna go and die on me.”

David’s smile fades somewhat, but not completely. He can understand Kevin’s hesitation, and it seems like a fair enough compromise.

“Sure.”

And then the radio goes and kills whatever positive mood had been beginning to blossom.

 _“I’m just gonna come out and say what we’re all thinking here,”_ a man’s voice rasps through the speakers _, “there aren’t enough people left alive out there for looting to be of any real concern. Sure, some stores will be broken into and some stuff will be stolen, but do I feel like I’ll need to flee the city for my own safety? No, definitely not.”_

The smile vanishes from David’s face. He distracts himself by sucking down the rest of his Shirley Temple, and when that’s all gone resolves to chew on the straw until it’s lost all usefulness.

 _“Thank you, Caller Eight,”_ the radio host says. “ _Caller Nine, you are on the air.”_

 _“Hi, yeah, can we take a minute to talk about what we’re supposed to do with all these bodies?”_ a young women’s voice asks rather bluntly. She doesn’t sound at all upset by the subject-matter, mostly just inconvenienced—like every irate customer David’s ever had to deal with during his call center job.

 _“The collection vans haven’t been by my neighborhood for a full week now,”_ the woman is saying, _“and we all know people have stopped going to the quarantine zones a while back. Like, **I get it** , people want to die in their houses, not lying in a football field somewhere, but things are going to start stinking up around here pretty soon.”_

David spits out his straw and pushes his empty glass back towards Kevin for the simple purpose of making a loud scrape sound against the bar top, “Are there any stations playing music?”

Kevin shakes his head in the negative, “I checked, but they’re pretty much all talking about the virus.” He takes the empty glass from David, replaces it with a clean one and automatically starts mixing up another Shirley Temple. “I can pop a CD in though if you want?”

“Yes, _please._ ”

While David sips on his fresh drink, Kevin fumbles around behind the bar again just trying to find a CD. It takes him a few minutes, but eventually he makes a small sound of success and puts whatever disk he found into the CD player set up on the countertop behind him. It’s no band David’s ever heard before, some kind of awful dance-pop techno mix, but David finds it much more appealing than listening to Virus talk on the radio.

“Can’t help but notice you’re not wearing a mask… of _any_ sort,” Kevin says, mixing together another drink, except this time trying to do it via fancy bartender moves that he seems to be very bad at, especially given his limited dexterity with the gloves.

“I… The truth is that I…” David hesitates, chewing on his straw. Honestly, the idea of wearing a mask hadn’t seemed all that important to him… for multiple reasons. He drops his gaze down to the bar top and admits with a small shrug, “I don’t really care if I get sick.”

There’s the sound of glass shattering behind the bar, followed by a hissed, “ _Shit, fuck—”_

Concerned green eyes dart up to see that Kevin had accidentally flipped a bottle of alcohol into what had once been a stack of martini glasses. Before David can ask if he’s okay though, Kevin’s already turned away from the mess and blurts out rather eloquently, “That is dark as shit, man.”

“Um… sorry?”

Kevin waves away any kind of apology, “No, no— _I’m_ sorry. Here I am pouring you virgin-ass _Shirley Temples_ when you’ve been needin’ the hard stuff. Here, lemme pour you something with some _actual_ strength.”

“Oh, uh—”

“What’s your poison? Vodka? Whiskey? Bourbon?”

How about laced Kool-Aid?

“No,” David shakes his head, pulling his Shirley Temple closer like maybe he can protect it. “No, no, I don’t—”

“What? You want drugs?” Kevin asks, gloved hands braced against the bar as he leans closer to David. “I got _lots_ of drugs, Red.”

“Drugs—what? _No,_ ” David sputters. His shoulders hunch up defensively, and finally he manages to blurt out the only real excuse he can think of, “I’m only twenty, I’m not old enough to drink, much less do drugs!”

Kevin stares at him, and despite not being able to see his face through the mask, David’s picking up a sense of… _disbelief_ from the other man, though he’s not exactly sure why. Maybe Kevin thought he was a lot older than he actually is? Or maybe Kevin really does work at this club and there’s an age restriction that David doesn’t quite meet.

Techno-pop music fills the silence between them.

“You’re kiddin’, right?” Kevin asks, amusement coloring his tone.

“Yeah, I’m only twenty,” David says, “and like _barely_ even twenty at that. Twelve hours ago, I was still just nineteen.”

“Oh, it’s your birthday?” Kevin seems to perk up at the news. He points at David with finger guns, “Hey, congratulations, man. Despite it all, you’ve somehow survived to be a year older. That _alone_ deserves a drink.”

“But I’m not—”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re not twenty-one.” Kevin waves the fact off as inconsequential. Turning his back to David, he reaches up to pull down a couple of still-intact bottles of alcohol from their fancy little display behind the bar. Palming a long, skinny bottle of something pink, he looks over his shoulder at David and says, “I won’t tell the cops if you don’t— _HA!_ ”

David’s not sure what goes into the drink Kevin mixes. He’s never been all that interested in alcohol in general, so he doesn’t recognize any of the liquids on sight, and Kevin mixes it all far too quickly for David to get a good look at any of the labels. He thinks vodka might be involved, because that’s clear, isn’t it? And one of the bottles Kevin grabbed definitely had clear liquid in it.

Regardless of that though, the end result is something Pepto-Bismol pink on the top and cyan blue on the bottom in a tall skinny glass. Kevin finishes it off with a tall straw and a little blue umbrella before sliding it over to David.

“ _Ta-dah!”_ he says, doing jazz-hands.

David eyes the concoction warily. This is the second time tonight someone’s tried to talk him into trying some kind of mystery drink, the only difference here being that this one isn’t likely to kill him.

“Take a sip, at least,” Kevin says, gesturing for him to ‘go for it’. “If you don’t like it, I’ll go back to mixing you _Shirley Temples._ ”

It’s exactly the sort of peer pressure situation high school warns you about. David can admit that the drink does look appealing though. He’s never had anything this _pink_ before and he is kind of curious about what it tastes like. Fruity? Sour? He’s heard that alcohol ‘burns when it goes down,’ but what does that even mean?

‘ _It’s just one drink,’_ he reasons to himself. _‘And you haven’t been on any medications for a while now, so it wouldn’t be a big deal to just_ try _it, right?’_

David pulls the glass closer to himself. His eyes briefly flicker up at Kevin, like maybe he can get some kind of reading off of him about the drink, but those green lenses of the face mask reveal nothing. Sighing out all his feelings of doubt, David finally takes the plunge and pops the straw into his mouth; his heart fluttering nervously in his chest as he sucks down a rather generous gulp.

It’s… very sweet, but not in an overpowering way. The taste kind of reminds him of cotton candy, to be honest, and beneath that all, there’s a taste there that has a sort of kick to it. He doesn’t quite know how to describe it. It doesn’t ‘burn when it goes down,’ but it is a bit of an unpleasant aftertaste that makes his nose wrinkle up.

“Sooooo?” Kevin asks.

It’s actually kind of good. Not as good as his Shirley Temple—it would better without that sharp flavor to it that David can only guess must be the alcohol—but still, it’s pretty decent.

“It’s alright,” is what he says. “Sweet.”

Kevin chuckles, “Yeah, I tried to make it extra fruity to appeal to your, uh, _delicate sensibilities._ You know, most people who drink do it for the buzz, not because they like the taste of alcohol.”

David tentatively takes another sip. It tastes even sweeter the second time around. He’s never been ‘buzzed’ before, but he’s seen plenty of classmates who were. His second roommate once theorized that the feeling was probably similar to how David feels when he’s adjusting to a new medication regimen. At the time, David could only shrug and take his word for it.

“Keep drinking that and eventually you won’t even be able to taste the alcohol,” Kevin says.

David pauses, straw still hooked over his bottom lip, “Sound like that could be dangerous.”

Kevin wiggles one hand in a side-to-side, so-so motion and says, “ _Ehhhh,_ only if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“But I _don’t—“_

“Don’t even worry about it, Red. You got me here, and _I_ am a master of all things alcohol,” Kevin stretches over the bar top and claps David on the shoulder companionably. “I won’t let you get too shit-faced.”

David gets all the way down to the blue part of his drink when he and Kevin fall into a discussion about the things they’ll miss; skipping past the obvious basics of running water and electricity, which everyone keeps saying is due to fail at any time now if things don’t improve. Kevin starts off by talking about the internet, and then quickly corrects himself with an irreverent sigh of internet _porn._ David counters that with no more new TV shows or movies to watch, and from there, it’s a quick back and forth.

Fast food, fresh food from the supermarket, online dating, Netflix, cats and dogs and just having a pet in general even though David hasn’t had a pet since he was a small child. Air conditioning, heating that doesn’t involve a fire or wood stove. Calendars. Halloween. Christmas. Any holiday at all—

_People._

David was really gonna miss there always being so many _people_ walking around him.

That general sense of depression starts to creep back up on him, along with the morbid thought that at least it’s unlikely that he’ll make it past the next few months, so it’s not like he’ll have to be without that stuff for very long.

‘ _Why did I leave that party again?’_

Despite his earlier reservations, one drink turns into two, and what starts as a sugary cotton-candy monstrosity is followed soon after by something called a screwdriver, and then a strawberry daiquiri (“ _Without_ the ice, sorry Red”), and then something yellow and orange that kind of tastes like peaches—and David knows that he should stop, that he shouldn’t have even had that first drink to begin with, but gosh, he just wants to stop _thinking._

He gets it—everyone’s dying, the world as he knows it is probably going to change into something completely unrecognizable to him, and it’s only a matter of time before he dies too—but does his brain need to constantly _remind_ him of this all?

He just wants a break, just for a little while, and in terms of vices, alcohol’s a better choice than whatever poison Daniel had handed him.

‘ _I wonder if he’s dead now.’_ David can’t help but think. ‘ _I wonder if they’re all dead now.’_

Kevin slides him another drink. It takes David longer than he’d like to admit to realize it’s just water. That’s how the rest of the evening goes, hazy conversation he probably won’t remember in the morning interspersed with numerous bathroom breaks and several glasses of water that Kevin is very insistent about him drinking. Considering how the rest of his day had gone prior to this little nightclub excursion, it’s not too bad of an ending for the night.

He falls asleep face-down in one of the bar booths, vaguely hoping that he doesn’t drown in a puddle of his own vomit because that’d be a terrible way to go, yet at the same time thinking that he wouldn’t be all that upset if it did happen. It’d certainly be better than dry-drowning on failing lung tissue and throwing up his liquefied digestive tract.

 

* * *

 

 His bike is gone when he wakes up, as is Kevin the bartender in his gasmask. He’s not sure whether or not these two things are related, but David can’t find it in himself to be mad about it either way. If the guy needed his bike that badly, or if anyone else did for that matter, they can have it. Frankly, David is too distracted by what is very clearly a hangover to be all that bothered by the loss. Stepping out into the morning light after ‘sleeping one off’ in a dark nightclub is a brand-new kind of fresh hell he’s never experienced before.

It’s an overcast day, dim and cloudy, but the pain that spikes through his head makes him feel like he’s staring directly at the sun. A lingering sense of nausea clings to his stomach too, and David’s struck by this mental image of alcohol filtering through his veins like tiny shards of poison. Considering what he almost did at that party last night, the visual isn’t a pleasant one.

Still, David knows he could be feeling a whole lot worse than he actually is. He’s seen first-hand just how bad a hangover can be—has had roommates that were physically unable to pick themselves up off the bathroom floor the next morning, and has even had to nurse a few of them back to health with crackers and ginger ale. Considering how much he drank the night before, the fact that he’s up and walking around with little more than a wince speaks for itself. Kevin was right—bike thief that he is—drinking all that water had done a lot of good in clearing the alcohol from his system.

The thought of ‘ _Never again’_ passes through his head regardless; why anyone would voluntarily put themselves through something like that a second time is a mystery to David. He can certainly understand wanting to escape reality, but it just doesn’t seem worth all the hassle after the fact.

Exhaling slowly, his breath a disgruntled cloud of condensation in the cold winter air, David draws the hood of his jacket up to both shade his eyes and stave off the biting chill. It occurs to him belatedly that he doesn’t really recognize where he is—he rode around so much last night without really paying attention to where he was going—but rather than get overly concerned about being lost, he just picks a direction he thinks his apartment might be in and starts walking.

One good thing about the city is that everything sort of connects to everything else, and some billboards and buildings are so big, you can practically use them as a compass rose. At some point, he knows he’ll see something familiar and can find his way home based on that.

He only begins to mourn the loss of his bike when one block turns into two and he has yet to find a single recognizable landmark; not the copper domed roof of the local university, or the golden arch dragon leading into china town, or even the ridiculously large Pepsi cola sign that’s been there probably since the company’s inception back in 1898. It’s still early, so David knows he has plenty of time to find his way back home, but it’s not like he wants to be out here all day—with the wind ripping through his too-thin jacket, and the _smell of rot_ , and the covered forms that he’s having a bit of a hard time pretending aren’t corpses.

When David had ridden his bike to the party last night, he’d kept his eyes on the horizon and deliberately blurred out all signs of civilization crumbling around him. Walking down the street now, it’s impossible to ignore. The city has always been kind of dirty, but never as bad as this. Forgoing the fact that there are as many dead bodies as there are parking meters—there’s trash piled up along the sidewalks and spilling out onto the road, and shop windows are boarded up and spray-painted over with messages of doom and destruction, but also a twisted kind of hope; _‘The End is Now’_ intermingling with ‘ _Virus Don’t Scare Me.’_

_The New Plague is Upon Us._

_Do Not Enter! Nothing Left!_

_~~God Has Abandoned Us~~_ _God Is Calling Us Home!_

David passes it all by with willfully blind eyes, thinking instead about how nice it is that people can still find something to be passionate about despite everything that has happened. He most certainly does not pay any attention to the bloated limbs that peak out from beneath stained sheets—the skin waxy and discolored and in some cases sloughed off completely— _no,_ he definitely does not take the time to look at that at all, nor does he pay any attention to the torn flyers about missing persons and government-sanctioned instructions on how to avoid infection and where to go for quarantine that are stapled to every visible surface of every telephone pole he passes by.

The cars though, he can’t help but notice all the cars. There are so many of them, scattered along the road and parked crooked and left behind; it’s rush-hour traffic at a stand-still, frozen in time like some relic of a bygone era.

 _‘No, **not** **gone** ,_’ he tells himself, because—because _this is not the end—no_ , it’s only… a temporary hiccup in human history, that’s all. Just like there have been wars and plagues in the past, this too will pass and eventually everything will go back to normal. These cars haven’t been abandoned, they’ve just been parked rather inconveniently because everyone had been in such a hurry to leave. At some point the owners will remember—they’ll think to themselves, _boy, did I just leave it out there in the street? How silly of me—_ and then they’ll be back to collect their vehicles.

That being the case, many of them will be rather disappointed to come back and discover that their car’s battery has died and the seats have been rained on because they left their doors hanging open. Closing the doors himself is just the neighborly thing to do.

David starts with a red jeep parked next to a fire hydrant—he’d move the vehicle himself so the owner doesn’t get a ticket, but he can’t find the keys anywhere—and he gradually makes his way from one block to the next in a zig-zagging path down the middle of the street. The task slows him down quite a bit, and he knows it’s dangerous to be walking in the road like this, but it’d be rude to just walk by and leave the doors open; his motives certainly have nothing to do with how much it distracts himself from the decomposing biohazards he has to navigate his way around.

Three or four blocks later, he comes across a blue mini-van that has a bunch of luggage scattered around it and torn open with clothes and toiletries and other random paraphernalia spilled out onto the pavement, be it from looters or from the owner who had been in too much of a hurry to leave to pick up after themselves. David has the time though—has all the time in the world with nowhere to be and nothing to do—and he uses that time now to gather all the items into the suitcases. He folds the clothes and organizes the items into neat piles and rows, zipping each suitcase shut as best as he can.

Closing the van’s side doors and opening up the hatchback, as David stacks all the luggage into the trunk like it’s a game of Tetris, a whisper of a thought crosses his mind that maybe he should leave too. Gather up some supplies and just… go camping—maybe even get a start on his National Parks bucket list item.

It would be something to do, something better than just sitting at home alone.

Far in the distance, David sees the Pepsi sign peaking up over the horizon. If he were to estimate, he’d say his apartment was about a thirty to forty-minute walk away.

‘ _Maybe in a week,_ ’ he thinks to himself. _‘Maybe in a week I’ll leave. When I’m feeling more up to it.’_

Shivering as the wind picks up around him and wishing he’d worn more layers beneath his jacket, David hunches his shoulders against the chill, buries his hands in his pockets and keeps walking. From the way the clouds are looking, snow is a definite possibility, and he’d like to get back to his apartment before that becomes an issue.

_‘I still need cereal.’_

The thought comes to him about twenty-something minutes later when he finally starts to recognize his surroundings. He pauses at the corner of Bloomfield Lane, knowing that turning left will take him past the 7-Eleven that’s two blocks from his apartment whereas going right will take him to a grocery store that’s an extra ten minutes out of his way. Normally he’d just go with the 7-Eleven, it’s his default, but that place had been pretty much picked clean the last time he went—and as much as he wants to get home and shut himself off from the rest of the world, he knows he’ll have better odds with the grocery store.

It’d probably be a good time to pick up some other essentials too, things that the grocery store would be more likely to have. He’s almost out of toilet paper and he needs to stock back up on bottled water if they have any. You’re fine if you’re just taking a shower, but what’s coming out of the pipes right now has to be boiled before it’s safe to drink, and on top of that, the news keeps saying they’re not sure how long running water will even last (always ending it with that same statement, ‘ _unless things improve soon’)_.

Getting more now would be the smart thing to do. Given his current state of mind, he’s probably more likely to just go thirsty instead of actually putting in the effort to boil himself a clean drinking source.

_Or maybe he would just drink the contaminated water directly from the tap, because heck, he’s going to die at some point in the near future anyway, so why bother—_

He should also probably grab whatever perishables they have left before it all goes bad—David has a feeling they won’t be getting more anytime soon—and then balance that out with some non-perishables. If he can manage to get all of that, he could probably go another two weeks without having to leave his apartment again.

It’s that reason alone that actually pushes him to take the ten-minute detour.

 

* * *

 

Nose blindness. Olfactory fatigue or adaptation.

It’s the phenomenon where you stop smelling something after a while even though the scent is still there. There’s a lot of science behind it that David doesn’t understand, but he gets the general idea. Basically, your brain is always on the look-out for new scents in case it needs to warn you of something potentially dangerous. When you’ve been smelling the same thing continuously, after a while, your brain figures it has sufficiently warned you of that scent and stops registering the smell altogether. It’s why you will never smell your house in the same way someone who’s just visiting does, or why David can go a week without showering and won’t really be bothered by it unless he’s sniffing directly under his armpits.

This rule does not seem to apply to dead bodies. Apparently decaying flesh is a cornucopia of so many different awful aromas that your nose is constantly picking up something new and terrible from it—

_‘Eau de le cadavre.’_

—and the only thing more powerful than the scent of one dead body is the scent of _multiple_ dead bodies.

Hand pressed over his nose and mouth, David smells it from a block away. Any sensible person would turn back, but he just keeps walking, a mental shopping list running on repeat in the back of his mind; _cereal, water, batteries, toilet paper, perishables and non-perishables._

There are no cars in the grocery store parking lot. There are, however, what could easily be two-hundred or so body bags laid out on the pavement in haphazard rows. From what David can see, it’s less of a quarantine zone and more of a dumping ground. Quarantine zones tend to be sectioned off with chain-link fences and plastic tents and warning signs posted in various different languages. There’s none of that here though, just a big open lot with a bunch of body bags taking up all the parking spaces.

David wonders if all of the big parking lots are like this now. Once you fill up all the cemeteries and stadiums and parks and sporting fields, there aren’t too many other options when it comes to open space in a city, and considering the population of a city, they need _someplace_ to put all the… waste and whatnot.

He sighs through chilled fingers. It’s a lot harder to pretend that the bodies aren’t there when there are so many of them.

This could be a good thing though. Most people wouldn’t want to go anywhere _near_ such a concentrated area of infection, so maybe there’s actually a lot left in the grocery store for him to choose from. Alternatively, there could be _nothing_ left, but David chooses to believe the former in this case.

Getting past all the bodies is… a bit of a task, but David treats it like a game of hopscotch, springing from one clear space of pavement to the next and hoping he doesn’t lose his balance. He tallies up points in his head for every successful jump and skip he makes, thinks to himself, ‘ _That’s ten points for three bodies cleared—this is fine, this is fine, thisisfine—four quick jumps on one foot at two points each is eight which is a total of eighteen—everything is finefinefine—’_

He reaches the front entrance with a total score of 78 points and about 120 repetitions of the word ‘fine.’

The windows aren’t all boarded up like most other stores, and the front doors are hanging off their hinges. Judging by the amount of trash collected up in the entryway, someone had pried the doors open a while back. David kicks it all out of the way now to clear a path, lifts an overturned shopping cart back up on its wheels and heads inside.

It’s dark. The electricity’s out in the store and the light from the front only extends so far, but David can still see well enough to maneuver his way around without knocking into anything. He does trip a few times though. It seems that people have made quite a mess of the place, knocking over displays and leaving boxes and bags and jars and cans of all sorts of food spilled out on the floor to be trampled over.

The urge to clean up and put everything back on the shelves hits him just as strongly as his need to close all those car doors, but he manages to hold himself back this time. Daylight only lasts so long in the winter, and he wants to get back to his apartment sooner rather than later.

Deciding to start at one end of the store and work his way down each aisle, David actually manages to find a bag of apples, some potatoes, a lone carrot, and a few onions in the produce section. He also finds a coconut, and even though he has no idea what he’ll do with it, he tosses it into the cart anyway. The majority of what’s left in produce isn’t salvageable—the bananas are so brown, they look like they might liquefy if he picks them up, and the packages of berries left over have already started to grow fuzzy with mold—so David will take whatever he can get.

He doesn’t bother checking out what’s left in the deli, or looking through any of the refrigerated sections. He may be courting death from the virus by stepping over all those bodies, but he’s not going to purposely give himself food poisoning; he hasn’t quite reached _that_ level of self-loathing just yet.

Looping his way up and down each aisle, he starts humming a little tune to himself as he slowly fills up his cart with anything useful. The shelves aren’t completely empty, but they’ve been picked through plenty. There’s not a whole lot of options to choose from like he’d been hoping, and he pretty much has to go with whatever’s left that looks safely edible, but David’s still thankful for what he does find. A bag of rice, a couple cans of fruits and veggies, a jar of peanut butter and a box of pancake mix; he can definitely make a couple of good meals out of that.

Pushing his cart through a field of shattered jam jars and a spilled bag of sugar, David imagines that the lights are on, that there’s music playing overhead. He looks at the store around him and visualizes stocked shelves and other people doing their own grocery shopping; not running around in a panic and grabbing anything they can fit in their carts, but leisurely perusing brands and comparing prices and checking items off their lists.

Yes, just another normal weekday at the grocery store. David will pick out all the usual foodstuffs he always gets along with a few extra essentials—batteries, jugs of water, and other things of that nature—not because the world is ending, but simply because they are helpful things to have.

And then just as he turns down the cereal aisle, his perfect illusion of normality is shattered by the sound of another human being—not an imagined one, but a real, live human being—one who is making quiet, distressed sniffling sounds in the next aisle over.

David freezes, his breath catching in his throat.

The sound of wet sniffling is unexpected, but not unusual. David knows this objectively. Emotional breakdowns in public have become commonplace since the virus first hit, as has leaking blood and infection all over the place at the most inopportune times, and whoever this is, they’re either sick or they’re crying.

He honestly hadn’t expected anyone else to be in the store with him though, and with the possibility of a social confrontation looming, David finds himself at a complete loss on how to proceed from here. Funny how he’s fine with fake people shopping around him, but the second someone real shows up, his brain falls into a state of panic.

The thing is, David’s not in any position to be a comforting shoulder for anyone to cry on. Usually he’s great at being a pillar of support—it’s one of the main reasons why he started his degree in social work—but for the past few months now, his brain’s been a big ol’ mess of chemical imbalance. If anything, he’s more likely to make it worse, maybe even sit down next to this person and start crying too.

He also just… really doesn’t want to deal with another person’s emotions right now. He’s tired. He drained all the socialization out of himself yesterday, and he wasn’t expecting to run into someone so soon after.

Plus, for all he knows, this person _wants_ to be left alone. Most people don’t like an audience when they’re crying. Why else come to an abandoned grocery store and tuck yourself away in the darkest aisle furthest away from the door?

And if they’re sick… well, there’s not much David can do in that case either.

‘ _Hello stranger, sorry you’re dying? Oh, but I’m sure they’ll be coming out with a cure any day now!’_

Absolutely useless.

For one shameful moment, David considers making a silent escape. It would be so easy; just turn right around and retreat with his supplies before they notice he’s there.

They would hear him though, if he left. Between the squeaking of the grocery cart’s wheels and the rattling of the cans he’s collected, they would know that someone else had been in the store with them and that they walked away without even a simple _‘Are you okay?’_

It would be an incredibly crummy thing to do to someone.

He compromises with himself, thinks, ‘ _Maybe just a quick peek? I can check on them then leave.’_

He could do that much, make this one small gesture, and if he does mess it up, he can at least say he tried. It’s certainly better than doing nothing at all.

David plasters a smile on his face—tells himself to be comforting, be cheerful, and at the same time sympathetic—people don’t like him when he’s depressed.

Leaving his cart where it is, he quietly steps up to the edge of the next aisle to peer around the corner, assess the situation, see what he’s dealing with before he dives in with both feet, whether it actually is someone who’s sick, or if they’re only just having some kind of emotional breakdown.

What he doesn’t expect to see is a child.

* * *

_TBC_

_Hope you enjoyed that Kevin cameo. :)_

_Please leave comments, guys! I really want to hear what you think so far!_

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> David doesn’t think very highly of himself. That's okay though, Max doesn’t think very highly of David either.

**Unspoken Lifelines**

**_Chapter 4_ **

 

David took a seminar last semester on how best to handle children during various disaster scenarios. It had been an all-day thing with multiple speakers, PowerPoint presentations and even some roleplaying games. Mostly they focused on natural disasters and accidents—fires, floods, hurricanes, car wrecks, things of that nature—but they did briefly cover some of the more unlikely scenarios, such as shootings or bombings. Pandemics hadn’t been part of the curriculum, but the concepts were the same.

Staring down at this small child now though, the only thing David can remember from that day is that his pen had stopped working halfway through and the girl sitting next to him had been kind enough to lend him one of hers.

In fact, it’s like he’s forgotten everything; every childcare course he’s ever taken, every lecture, and every ten page, double-spaced report he’s ever written. The class descriptions stick in his head—Introduction to Early Childhood Education, Child Psychology 101, Observation and Assessment, Child Development and Guidance 201—but anything that he actually learned from those classes, anything that had been discussed, it’s all a giant blank now.

Things like how you talk to children, how you comfort them while still maintaining the boundaries they’ve set— _this is how their minds work, what each age is like developmentally, all the Do’s and the Don’ts of helping them through trauma_ —the knowledge should all be there, but try as he might, David just can’t summon any of it to the surface—or at least, nothing that would be of any actual use for the situation he’s stumbled into.

He never even got as far as taking the advanced courses. That was all stuff he would have been starting this semester. He’s pretty sure he still has a couple textbooks left over from previous semesters back at his apartment, but that doesn’t do him a lot of good now.

He decides to wing it and hope for the best, and he starts by dropping down to one knee—because that’s what you do with kids, right? Get down on their level? You certainly don’t tower over them, and David’s so tall, he tends to tower over things without meaning to.

This far back into the store, it’s too dark to make out much detail other than the fact that it’s definitely a kid, one who is far too young to be on their own and so very, very small. Just a little shadow huddled against a wall of toilet paper and paper towels, clutching something fuzzy-looking in their arms and with some kind of bag hanging over one shoulder; anything about physical features or even whether it’s a boy or a girl being too indistinct to see.

When David finally speaks though, flying by the seat of his pants, what comes out of his mouth is… regrettably more awkward than it is comforting.

“Heeeey there… _buddy._ ”

The kid curls in tighter on his or herself, keeps their head down and buried into the fuzzy thing they’re holding, yet doesn’t waste a second in telling David, “Go _awaaaay!”_

It’s a long, drawn-out groan—from a little boy, if David were to guess—and while the tone isn’t a tearful one, or at least they’re not actively crying, the kid is very clearly miserable all the same. Kind of a no-brainer, given the situation. For someone with more experience, this would of course be the moment to step in with comforting words and unobtrusive questions, something that would get the kid to open up a bit, distract them from present circumstances and get a dialog going.

David does exactly none of these things. To be fair, his involvement with children in general has only gone as far as hypotheticals discussed in a classroom setting, plus the few conversations he’s had with younger cousins—all of whom he could pass off to their parents whenever they started to get truly upset about something—so when faced with a child vehemently telling him to _go away_ , well…

“Okey-dokey!”

He doesn’t mean to sound as cheerful as he does when he says this, but at this point, he’s not quite sure he can stop the peppy pitch; It’s like his brain has locked itself into ‘customer service’ mode out of some sort of defense mechanism.

“If you need me,” David continues, backing up a step, “I’ll be in the next aisle over looking at cereal.”

He pauses for a moment, waits, but the kid still doesn’t look up at him, just hugs that fuzzy thing closer and readjusts the strap of the bag when it slips off his shoulder.

Time to retreat and regroup. David needs an actual strategy here.

 

* * *

 

To be honest, David’s kind of hoping that a parent or guardian for the kid will just appear out of nowhere, like maybe they were just somewhere else in the store, too far away for David to hear them, and they’ll be back any minute now to collect the boy and take care of things. It’s not a thought he’s proud of, but out of everyone left in the world, he knows he’s not the best person to handle this. Sure, maybe he’s a _bit_ more qualified than say, a drug addict, or someone who hates kids, but his point is that he’s only just barely above an already pretty low bar.

While it’s true that he started his degree in social work with the intentions of helping children specifically, he was supposed to have another two years of college left and a ton of supervised internships before that became an actual factor in his life. Being twenty doesn’t make him feel like any more of an adult than he did at eighteen or nineteen, much less a capable one who knows how to take care of a child.

David can barely take care of himself.

Standing here alone in the cereal aisle though, staring down the only _two_ boxes of cereal that are left as if he’s going to make a legitimate choice between them, David is met with absolute silence. There is no second set of footsteps in the distance; no one rustling around somewhere in the back and out of sight. The only sounds of life, of breathing, are from him and this kid alone.

Still, David waits and he listens. He prays to higher powers he doesn’t believe in that someone else will walk through those front doors. Someone who knows what they’re doing. Someone better than him.

Fate and the universe don’t answer though. Seems they’ve gone quiet on humanity as a whole for the past few months now.

 _‘I guess it’s just me then,’_ he thinks with a growing sense of trepidation. _‘Only me.’_

It’s not that he doesn’t _want_ to help, it’s just—he’s a manic depressive bipolar screw-up off his meds. He’s _definitely_ going to mess this up somehow.

Shifting from foot to foot fretfully, David looks back the way he came, wavering on a mental precipice while at the same time knowing that he can’t just do _nothing._ He tries to motivate himself on the matter, does a little bit of self-coaching the way past therapy visits have taught him and tells himself that, look, this isn’t that big of a deal, okay? Maybe the kid’s just lost. David could walk him home or to a relative or a friend’s house.

It could be as simple as that, and David’s just getting himself worked up over nothing.

 _‘And even if it is something more involved,_ ’ he thinks, ‘ _it’s just one kid. I can… I can handle looking after one kid for… at least a little while.’_

That tight anxious feeling in his chest doesn’t fade in the slightest at the thought, but the sound of another quiet sniffle from the next aisle over finally gets him moving regardless. Sweeping both boxes of cereal off the shelf and into his cart, David loops his way back around to the other aisle with a kind of nervous determination. He’s not at all confident in his abilities to do this right, but he’ll darn well do whatever he can to help this kid out.

The cart’s squeaky wheels announce his return in the most grating way possible, but that small shadow doesn’t even shift when he approaches. The boy stays a little curled up ball against the paper products, and David decides that acting casual is the way to go here; nice and non-threatening, just a guy doing his grocery shopping.

He pulls individually wrapped rolls of toilet paper off the top shelf next to the kid, mostly because collecting them one at a time will take longer than just grabbing a bulk pack, and as he leisurely stacks them up in his cart, he says, “So I… can’t help but notice that we’re the only two people in the store.”

The remark doesn’t come out as nonchalantly as he’d hoped, and maybe just a bit more cheery than he’d intended, but it’s enough to get a reaction out of the kid—though certainly not the sort of response you’d expect from someone so young.

“Yeah, no shit.”

Under normal circumstances, David feels like he might reprimand the use of such coarse language, but this whole situation is anything but normal. If there’s any good reason for children to be cursing like adults and moody teenagers, an apocalyptic-level pandemic would be it.

One arm still stretched up and holding a roll of toilet paper, the wrapper crinkling in his grasp, David looks down at the kid huddled up on the ground to his right. He watches the way he kind of leans away from David, the way those tiny shadowed shoulders slowly hunch up and up as the kid curls in on himself tighter. Textbook examples of defensive body language, and David takes several subtle steps back from the boy when he realizes.

Deciding to take a different approach, he tosses the last of the toilet paper into the cart, checks the floor for broken glass, and then plops his butt down on the ground across from the boy. He’s careful to keep a good three feet of distance between them, sitting cross-legged in a relaxed slouch; completely unthreatening, he hopes, and getting down on the boy’s level once again while at the same time being sure not to crowd him.

“I’m David,” he says, starting simple and hoping for the best, “What’s your name?”

“None of your _business,_ ” the words are muffled against whatever the boy’s hugging, but still spoken pointedly enough for David to understand him. “ _Go away.”_

The boy very clearly wants nothing to do with him, which is perfectly understandable given the circumstances. Right now, David is the very definition of ‘Stranger Danger’—an adult you don’t know approaching you while you’re alone and trying to talk to you and get to know you—a lesson in being cautious that any kid would have been taught by this age. David presses on regardless though, and he leans over sideways just a bit, trying to see if he can catch the boy’s eyes, or even possibly get him to look up. 

“That’s fine, you don’t have to tell me,” David says, making sure to maintain a pleasant and even tone-of-voice. Calm. That’s what he’s going for here. “I am a little concerned though about what you’re doing out here all by yourself.”

He waits for some kind of response, maybe even an explanation, but the boy just stays curled up and quiet.

“Do you live close by?” he asks after a long pause.

“No,” the boy says tersely, his shoulder hunching up to his ears.

“Are you lost?”

It feels like the wrong thing to say, and David hesitates when he asks—even just using the word ‘lost’ seems like a surefire way to get the waterworks going in any little kid—but it’s something he needs to know, right along with ‘ _Where the heck are your parents?’_ He’ll hold off on asking _that_ particular question for the moment though.

“I can help you find your way back home,” David is quick to reassure when the kid falls silent once more. “I know the city pretty well, so if you could tell me your address, or if you don’t know that, you could tell me about some stuff around your house and we can figure out—”

He’s slipped into a nervous ramble, something that past experience has proven he’s unable to pull himself out of, and unless the kid starts talking now, David will just keep going and going until he completely runs out of breath—at which point, he’ll pause to gasp and then keep going some more.

But then the boy coughs; that rasping wet sound that’s become oh-so-familiar these past few months. David’s heart drops into his stomach when he hears it, the words drying up in his throat completely, and suddenly he can’t think of a single thing to say to this kid—not after he’s heard that sound, one that’s become synonymous with the diseased and dying.

This is so much worse than the boy just being lost.

“There, see?” the boy bites out, and his head snaps up to stare David down when he says, “I’m _sick,_ so just _f-fuck_ _off_.”

  _‘Aggressive lashing out,’_ David thinks distantly, his brain pulling up fragments of information from an academic paper he read through once. _Care Strategies for Children with Challenging Behaviors_ , or something to that effect.

Except it can hardly be considered ‘challenging behavior’ when the kid has a perfectly legitimate reason for being so angry—and what do you even say to a child that’s mad about a terminal illness? Do you lie and tell them that they’ll be fine, or do you validate that anger and help them come to terms with the inevitable?

Maybe… maybe doctors or scientists will come out with a cure in time. He could tell the kid something like that. If he says it enough times, they both might actually believe it too.

 _‘Does he even know it’s a terminal illness?’_ David wonders, and a growing sense of dread forms in the pit of his stomach at the thought—but surely the boy must know _something_ about it, or he wouldn’t be using the information as a reason for David to leave.  

David’s not so easily scared away though. At least, not about this.

“Are you hungry?”

It’s the first thing that comes to mind, and for a moment, the kid seems taken aback by the sudden subject change, fumbling out a confused, “W-what?”

“Are you hungry?” David repeats, and when the boy just stares at him, he goes on to say, “Well, I’m pretty hungry myself.”

He’s starving, actually. He hasn’t eaten anything since yesterday afternoon, and he’s starting to think that this kid hasn’t had anything to eat for a while now either. One thing he kind of remembers from his child psychology class is that it’s not uncommon for some children to stop eating completely when they’re upset about something. The boy certainly doesn’t look like he’ll be getting up from his spot anytime soon.

“I’ll make us both something,” he announces brightly, thinking about the bag of apples in his cart and the cereal, or even the cans of fruits and veggies. It’s not ideal, but it’s food, and he thinks if he does another quick look through some of the aisles, he can find some other stuff too.

“It’ll be like a little… grocery store picnic!” David says, trying to put a positive spin on it all, and he claps his hands together decisively—pretends not to notice the way the boy flinches when he does so, but makes a mental note of it all the same.

The boy watches him carefully as he rises to his feet, making no move to get up himself, not that David’s all that surprised. It seems like the kid doesn’t really know what to make of the situation. He’s certainly not rejecting the offer of food, but he isn’t really agreeing to it either. He just sits there on the ground and stares, not saying anything.

At a bit of a loss himself, David figures maybe giving the kid a task to do will help, and since the boy doesn’t seem ready or willing to get up, David says, “How about you stay here and keep an eye on the cart? I’ll go grab us a couple extra things for our lunch.”

It’s apparently the wrong thing to say, though David’s not sure why. The boy looks away from him immediately, folding his little arms over his knees to rest his head on as he mutters a clipped, “Whatever.”

He doesn’t say anything more than that, just goes back to ignoring David completely. It’s a begrudgingly bitter agreement, and probably not the best note to leave this on—a more responsible adult would probably try talking to the kid further, work though whatever might be going on inside the kid’s head—but David can’t think of a single thing to say to make this any better than it is, and food feels like the fastest way to improve on the situation, even if only a little bit.

Turning on his heel, and with one last quick look over his shoulder at the boy, David walks briskly back down the aisle to go hunt a few extra things down.

 

* * *

 

_TBC_


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _(Just a reminder that Max is 6 years old in this, but small for his age. Apologies for any spelling or grammar errors)_

**_Chapter 5_ **

 

He pops over to the cooking aisle first, keeping an ear out the whole time just in case the kid gets up and leaves—not that David would stop him from leaving, but a child that young shouldn’t be walking around out there alone. If the boy did leave, David would have to go after him and at least make sure he got to wherever he was going safely. Anything less than that would be irresponsible.

The cooking aisle is as much of a mess as the rest of the store. There are boxes of cake and brownie mix crushed against the floor, yellow powder mixed with brown exploded out along the tile with stepped-on, shattered containers of sprinkles and torn-open bags of chocolate chips and crushed walnuts and peanuts and almonds. Thankfully, the small portion of the aisle reserved for cooking supplies has been left mostly untouched.

David picks out a can opener for the canned goods, a peeler for the apples, and a knife and a cutting board he can use to cleanly cut them into slices. It’s probably not even necessary, but kids don’t usually like eating apples whole if he’s remembering right—or at least, his cousins hadn’t—and he wants to make the meal as nice as possible for the boy, especially considering that he can’t exactly cook anything here.

Darting between the different aisles, picking up a few things here and there that would be useful, David mentally goes through everything he has back in the cart that they can actually eat right now. Apples, cereal, maybe one of the canned fruits or veggies, and if the kid’s not allergic, he does have that jar of peanut butter.

The faint sound of coughing falters his steps a few times, but David pushes down the negative thoughts that sound summons to the surface and forces himself to keep moving, to focus instead on the food.

Somehow despite everything he finds though, it still doesn’t feel like enough—more of a snack than an actual lunch—and he never realized until now how hard it is to put together a real meal when you’re so limited on options. Nothing that needs to be heated-up or cooked, and nothing from the refrigerated sections pretty much eliminates the majority of your usual meal choices. Making some kind of sandwich is out too, as any bread that might be left in the store would have gone bad by this point.

Finding himself at a loss, David heads over to the cookies and snacks aisle. Trail mix, protein or granola bars, crackers—anything of the sort would be more than welcome at this point. He gets down on his hands and knees, searching the bottom shelves and sifting through all the boxes and bags of food that have been knocked down and trampled over by the panicked crowds that passed through here. Not wanting to leave the boy alone for too much longer, David makes his hunt a quick one and grabs whatever he can find that’s even just moderately intact. He piles it all up into his arms and then makes one last quick stop over to the drink aisle to grab the first few cans of soda he sees before heading back.

Despite his trepidation over being the only one around to help the child, David’s relieved to see that the boy is still sitting right where he left him in the paper products aisle.

Making sure his steps are very clearly audible so as not to startle the boy again, David trots back over to his carriage and dumps everything he’s collected inside. The boy’s giving him that unsettlingly silent stare again, and David wishes they weren’t so far back into the store. Maybe if he could see the boy’s face a bit better, he could get an idea as to what the kid is thinking.

Deciding to remedy that situation now, David grabs the handle of the grocery cart and wheels it around to face the front of the store. When the boy still doesn’t make any move to get up though, David goes one step further and holds his hand out to the kid, saying, “Well, come on. Let’s go find a place up front where it’s brighter and we can get our little picnic all set up.”

There’s more silent staring as the kid has some kind of internal debate over the whole thing, but eventually he heaves out a sigh and drags himself to his feet, bypassing David’s proffered hand completely to walk ahead of him.

Not quite the win David was hoping for, but not a loss either.

Following after the boy with the cart, David does his best not to stare as they draw closer to the front, to daylight, and the details slowly start to reveal themselves. Shaggy black hair and copper-colored skin; a brief flicker of blue eyes before the boy speeds up to walk further ahead of him. What really stands out to David though is the fact that the boy is dressed in flannel pajamas instead of regular clothes; dark blues and greens with little dinosaurs on them. David’s eyes automatically drop down to the boy’s feet, but the kid is wearing sneakers, so at least there’s that.

It’s an odd combination for sure, but not as odd as the oversized women’s purse the boy has slung over one shoulder. As for the fuzzy thing the kid’s still holding onto with an iron grip, it’s a teddy bear, one that’s been well-loved and is missing a button eye.

David’s… not quite sure what to do with any of this information, and so he decides for the moment to just pretend this is all normal. Asking too many questions too soon would also probably scare the kid off.

They set up a spot in front of some of the registers, close enough to the front entrance to see, but not so close that they can actually see out the windows at the mass grave lying just outside in the parking lot. What serves as their ‘picnic blanket’ is a plastic tablecloth David found in the small party section of the store, one that has a colorful array of balloons printed along the borders. Paper plates and plastic eating utensils are set out, and while David busies himself with peeling and slicing up a few apples, he periodically glances over at the kid in a way he that hopes isn’t too obvious.

The boy is watching him again, sitting there with the teddy bear in his lap and the purse still tucked under one arm. David can’t help but notice how much the blue of those staring eyes contrasts vividly with how bloodshot they are. It’s not quite clear if the redness is because the boy’s sick or if it’s because he had been crying at some point, but his eyes are dry now and the look he casts David is _searing._ There’s not an ounce of trust there—not that David expects the kid to trust him just because he’s feeding him—but still, it’s unnervingly out of place on a face so young.

‘ _He doesn’t look a day over five._ ’

When asked about a possible peanut allergy, the boy doesn’t sound too sure either way, so David decides against using the peanut butter. He dishes out the apple slices along with a few cups of dry cereal, plus some chips and beef jerky and a few granola bars that he found. It seems like a good starting point. If the boy’s still hungry afterwards, David can get him another serving, but for now, he saves everything else he found in the cart for later.

And then they’re right back to where they were before with the boy not talking and David carrying on a mostly one-sided conversation, except this time with food involved. David fills up the silence between them by talking about college and dorm life with roommates (all highly edited) before he’d moved into his studio apartment, and he talks about watching cooking shows every night when he had dinner so that it didn’t feel like he was eating ramen all the time. None of it seems to interest the kid in the slightest though, not enough to get an actual verbal response out of him at least.

If David were a single father, he imagines this is how dinners would probably go—sullen silences and one-worded responses—except that’s usually what you’d expect out of a teenager if sitcoms are anything to go by, not a maybe-five-year-old. Kids that age are usually happier on TV, or at least more talkative.

“Do you… have a favorite TV show?” David asks, grasping at straws.

The boy shrugs, chomping down on a piece of jerky, but after a moment of chewing, he actually gives David a full sentence, saying, “Doesn’t matter, no more tv.”

A grim answer, but David’s never let that stop him before.

“There are still DVDs,” he points out brightly. “Plenty of shows to choose from.”

Again, the boy shrugs, apparently not impressed by his counterpoint.

“There are books too,” David says. He can feel his enthusiasm growing weaker though, especially when the boy coughs again, and his voice trails off with a faint, “Lots and lots of books.”

There’s even less of a reaction out of the kid to that comment. David unconsciously drops his eyes down to his own plate, exhaling through his nose. He picks up an apple slice and chews on it mechanically, thinking about how wild it is that someone so young can make you feel so awkward and inadequate.

_‘And helpless,’_ he thinks, holding back a wince when the boy lets out yet another ragged, wet cough.

With a gasp of air, the boy clears his throat and then goes back to eating with that downtrodden ‘ _whatever’_ body language as prominent as ever. David feels like he should be doing something, saying something, but any words of comfort he could offer—if he could even come up with any—would be just as worthless and stupid as asking the kid if he was okay. It’s probably also not a good idea to talk to a small child with the same tone of voice a nurse would use when speaking to a terminal cancer patient in hospice, which is exactly how his voice would sound if David did attempt to be comforting.

Why is he so bad at this?

“So, what’s your deal?” the kid asks quite abruptly, startling David from his thoughts and throwing him off completely—both from the question and from the fact that the boy’s actually talking to him without any prompting.

“My deal?” David asks, a little lost.

“I’m _sick_ ,” the boys says, and he uses the same amount of emphasis on the word ‘sick’ as when he’d said it before, “but you’re not… scared like everyone else.”

Surprisingly, his answer—David’s reason why—it comes to him quicker than he thought. He of course doesn’t bring up last night’s existential crisis, or the fact that he’s not really scared of getting sick because he doesn’t have much left to lose. Those aren’t appropriate things to tell a child of any age. What he does tell the kid though, it’s something that will always be true about himself no matter what his mental state may be.

“Being sick can be scary, sure, but helping you—it’s more important.” Was that too personal? The boy hasn’t even known him an hour, and David certainly doesn’t want to make him uncomfortable. He decides to generalize the statement, make it a little less intense, “Helping any kid is more important than anything I might be afraid of. It’s like—” he makes a random gesture in the air, searching for the right words, “—an adult’s job.”

The boy eyes him skeptically, says, “You don’t look like an adult.”

David can’t quite hold back his bark of laughter, because no, he most certainly does not look like an adult. How he feels about the topic on the inside matches perfectly with what he looks like on the outside. A boyish face with some baby fat still clinging on, patchy stubble like he only just hit puberty, and a voice that—well, it’s not _too_ high, but it could stand to be a touch deeper.

“I am still pretty young, I’ll admit,” he says, this time with a smile that’s not at all forced. “I do live on my own and pay bills though, so I guess that makes me _kind_ of an adult. I’m at least adult enough to help you out with any problems you may be having.”

That last part, he says nonchalantly, and he realizes a second too late that maybe he should have worded that better, or approached the subject more carefully than he did. Once again though, David speaks without thinking and the boy shuts down at the mere mention of help.

“I don’t got problems,” the kid mutters, his arms wrapping back around his bear in a tight hug and those piercing blue eyes drifting down, narrowing into a glare at the half-eaten plate of food.

David hesitates, says, “No?”

“No,” the kid bites out. “I’m sick, but… I can deal with it. Don’t need help. I’m old enough to… _act ‘sponsibly_.”

“I’m sure you are,” David says after a pause, his voice quiet but serious. Genuine. “It’s not about being old enough or responsible enough though. Even adults have problems and need help sometimes. Actually, adults of any age have problems and need help _a lot_ of the time. If anything, being responsible is knowing when to ask for help.”

The boy says nothing, just stares down at his plate with his mouth pressed into a tight frown. David watches him with his own frown, not quite sure where to go from here. Again, he tries to remember some of the techniques from his childcare classes, but all that comes to mind are vague concepts without any specifics. Be gentle but firm. Don’t talk down to them. Don’t get emotional because that shows them that you don’t have control over yourself.

Kids like this, they need choices and they need at least a little bit of control over the situation, over whatever decision is made, and there are ways to do this while still achieving the necessary end goal—although, other than ‘help the kid’ and ‘get him to agree to leave the store with you,’ David’s not quite sure what the true end goal is here.

He decides to start with a question, something to keep the conversation moving in the direction it needs to go.

“What do you want to happen after we’re done eating?”

Calm, curious, but without putting too much weight on the question.

“Dunno,” the boy says, all of his walls quickly wrapping back up around him. “You go back home.”

“What about you though?” David asks, pressing just a bit harder.

The boy shrugs, keeping his eyes down.

“You can’t just stay here all night,” David says, being a little more blunt, “I don’t think I could go back home knowing that you’re still here by yourself.”

“So then _forget_ you saw me,” the boy says. “And I _wouldn’t_ be by myself, I got my bear. I’m not a baby, okay? I’m not scared of the dark and I can sleep on—on the paper towels. I can take care of myself.”

“You shouldn’t have to though,” David says, and he’s very adamant about this fact. “That’s the thing. I don’t doubt that you are perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, but at your age, that’s not something you should be worrying about.

“So what?” the boy mutters, and then those bloodshot blue eyes are piercing into David’s very soul once more. “Life s’not fair, and s’not like _any_ of this even matters, ‘cause I’m sick!” He emphasizes his point by kicking over his plate of food and his can of soda, spilling sugary sweet Pepsi all over the plastic tablecloth. David quickly shuffles back to avoid it, but the boy just sits there and lets it soak into his pajama pants, saying, “You all think I’m too dumb and little so I don’t get it, but I do! I do get it! I’m sick and I _don’t_ get better!”

Before David can think of a single thing to say to that, the boy stands up with his purse and his bear and storms off. David counts to ten as he watches him go, not for his own benefit but to give the kid a moment to cool down. If the sounds of absolute chaos are anything to go by though, it doesn’t really work.

When David gets up to go after him, he finds the boy in the pet supplies aisle swinging the purse around like a medieval flail and knocking cans of cat food and dog food off the shelves. The kid bares his teeth when he catches sight of David, an upper incisor missing from his snarl, and he curls his hands into tiny fists around the strap of the purse and the furry arm of his stuffed bear.

“ _Why_ _are you_ _still here?”_ the boy snaps.

“I told you,” David says, still completely calm despite this explosive outburst. “I can’t just leave you here by yourself, and helping you really _is_ important.” Then, to show the kid that he’s serious about this, David sits down on the ground and shuffles backwards to lean against a stack of bagged cat litter like he plans on being here a while, saying, “So, while going home does sound nice, I think I’ll just stick around here until you’re ready to leave.”

“Yeah, and if I never leave—“ the boy says, shivering with either rage or sickness, or possibly a combination of both. “—what then?”

David gives a ‘what-can-you-do’ shrug, says like the answer is the simplest thing in the world, “Then I guess I just won’t be going home again, will I?”

For a moment, David thinks the boy’s going to hit him. He certainly looks like he wants to, from the way he’s holding the purse and the few menacing steps he takes towards David. The possibility is about as threatening as getting attacked by a kitten, but David keeps that observation to himself and just keeps sitting there with a small smile on his face.

Surprisingly though, when the boy does swing that purse, he’s not swinging it at David. Instead, he turns on his heel and unleashes a wave of destruction on what’s left of the pet supplies aisle like a child-sized hurricane. Dog treats, more dog food, cat toys and tins of cat food, it all goes flying off the shelves with every violent swing of the boy’s purse. Anything that’s too heavy to be knocked off, the boy drags from the shelves himself, tearing at it and spilling it out onto the tiles like a fresh kill—giant bags of dog food and cat food and birdseed, bags of wood shavings and hay and cat litter—and the entire time, the boy is cursing up a storm; words and phrases he definitely shouldn’t know at his age.

He gets about halfway through the aisle like this before he’s huffing and coughing, but even then, he still hasn’t quite reached the end of his tantrum.

“You—you’re so _dumb_ ,” the boy says in-between ragged gasps. “What, you’re just gonna—gonna stay here forever? Eat off the floor?”

Give them choices, let them feel in control.

“If that’s what you decide, then yeah, I’ll stay here forever,” David says. As an afterthought, he adds in his usual positive tone, “And for the record, I thought our little picnic was pretty fun.”

The kid breaths in and out, heavy, rasping, searching for words.

“I—“

He coughs into his stuffed bear, his legs folding up underneath himself as he plops down on the ground like all the fight’s been drained out of him. David straightens up in alarm at the sight of it, ready to rush over there and check on the boy. It’s fine though. The kid’s alright, just worn down from all that activity.

“You okay?” David asks, shuffling a bit closer.

Blue eyes flicker up at him and then drop back down to the ground. The boy shakes his head, hugs his arms around both the bear and the purse. When he finally speaks, his words are growled out and bitter, but at the same time, it’s the first genuine thing David’s heard him say all day.

“I don’t want to go back out there.”

“Oh… well, I get that,” David says softly, leaning forward. “It’s looking pretty scary out there right now, huh?”

“And _gross,_ ” the boy says, his nose wrinkled up in distaste.

“Yeah, and gross,” David agrees. He hesitates for just a moment before he adds, “If I walk out with you though, it might not be so scary.”

Once more, the boy goes quiet—and here, David finally sighs, “C’mon, kid, let me help you.”

He doesn’t know what else he can really say at this point that hasn’t already been said.

“It’s Max.”

David almost doesn’t hear it. The admission is spoken so quietly, and when his brain actually registers those tiny, muttered words, David thinks for a moment that maybe he heard wrong.

“Sorry, what?”

Sharp blue eyes narrow up at him, and for as sick as the boy must feel, for as tired as he must be, the fire hasn’t burned out in those eyes in the slightest. Not yet at least.

“My name is Max,” the boy—Max says, louder now and with more conviction. “Not ‘ _kid_ ,’ or ‘ _buddy_ ,’ or ‘ _champ_.’ Just Max.”

Doing his best to hold back a hundred-watt smile, David scooches a bit closer to the kid so that he’s sitting across from him now. He kind of wants to hold his hand out for a greeting, but Max doesn’t seem like the handshake-type, so David laces his fingers together instead and brightly tells the boy, “It is very nice to meet you, Max. As I said before, my name’s David, and I’d be happy to help you out.”

Max seems to study him carefully, suspiciously, judging the legitimacy of David’s words.

“Like how?”

The thing is, David can’t be sure what Max’s situation is. Maybe Max _is_ just lost, or maybe he ran away when he found out he was sick, but somehow David doesn’t think it’s as simple as that. From the way Max had been talking before—about being old enough, and not needing help, and taking care of himself—those aren’t usually the sort of things a kid would be saying if they knew they had a loving family waiting for them back at home, and Max certainly hadn’t jumped at the offer when David first said he could walk him home.

Of course, this could mean a variety of things. Max’s family could be—well, _everyone_ has been losing family to this virus. It’s not too much of a stretch that there will be a lot of orphaned children after this is all said and done. So maybe Max just doesn’t have any family left just like David doesn’t, or maybe he does, but he ran away because he didn’t want to get anyone in his family sick.

And then there’s always the possibility of an abusive home; part of the whole reason David pursued a degree in social work in the first place. Delving into any of that right now would be counterproductive though. Not to mention that David is nowhere near qualified enough to be having the sort of conversation an actual licensed social worker should be having with this kid.

Keeping things short and simple is the way to go here—baby steps—and the first step is getting Max out of this grocery store and away from the parking lot.

“Well, since you don’t exactly seem thrilled about me just walking you out—“ the glare Max gives David is answer enough, “—how about this: You wait here and I’ll go out first and clear us a path, then after—”

“No!” Max blurts out, and then has to stop to cough. When he gets his breath back, he says in a more subdued tone, “No, I can—I can go out with you.”

“Are you sure?” David asks, because the kid doesn’t really look like he wants to.

Max looks down at his bear, fiddles with one of the threadbare ears and says, “Yeah… s’fine. I’m not a baby.”

“Alright…” David says slowly, and while he does make yet another mental note and pins it up next to the one about flinching, he decides not to dwell on it right now. “New plan. You can—um… ride in the cart! Y’know, keep the food safe, and I’ll do the walking.” That’s reasonable right? And simple enough too. “So then you don’t have to touch anything or look at anything. Just leave the gross stuff for me. How’s that? We’ll be out of the store and away from the parking lot before you know it.”

“I guess that works,” Max mumbles.

“Okay?” David checks, just to be sure.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Great!” David says, smiling wide, because finally they’re getting somewhere. Maybe he remembers more from all his classes than he thought; at least subconsciously. “Do you want to help me finish shopping? I still need to get water, and I’m sure we can find some stuff for you too.”

Max reluctantly drags himself to his feet. He looks about as thrilled to go grocery shopping as any other kid his age would be—which is to say, not at all. With the purse back over his shoulder and the teddy bear dangling from one hand, he sighs out an unenthusiastic, “Sure.”

 

* * *

 

David’s not sure if that whole thing about putting _Vicks VapoRub_ under your nose to block out smells is a myth or not, but when he finds a little bottle of the stuff while hunting through the mostly empty medicine aisle, he decides there’s no harm in giving it a try. Standing three feet from the front entrance now, he thinks it must be doing something right because all he can pick up is the overpowering scent of menthol despite all that rot sitting just outside those doors. Max certainly doesn’t seem to have any complaints from his spot inside the grocery cart, all the food and supplies stacked up around him. He does wrinkle his nose up a few times, but David thinks that’s mostly due to the menthol and that artificial cold feeling the ointment causes.

With his back to the door and his fingers threaded through the front bars of the carriage, David carefully looks over everything in the cart and does a quick mental inventory of it all, because he has this nagging feeling that he’s missing something and there won’t be any return trips to here or any other place for a good long while once he gets back home.

He fit at much as he could into the cart while still leaving space for Max to sit, and thankfully the kid didn’t mind having some of the lighter items stacked up over his lap either. They have food and toilet paper and a couple jugs of water along with some more cans of soda and some bottles of juice. Max has his bear wrapped up in his arms and the purse he’s been carrying around this whole time is tucked safely behind his back. Shampoo, body wash, shaving cream and a new razor, and then as an afterthought, some children’s Tylenol and a bag of cough drops. Heck, they even managed to find some candy for Max.

So why does David feel like he’s missing something?

He’d already dropped a couple twenties by one of the cash registers, much to Max’s confusion— _“There may not be anyone here right now, Max, but somebody owns this store. I can’t just walk out of here with all this food and not pay for it, can I?”—_ so the feeling couldn’t be because of that.

“What is it?” Max asks warily, and David blinks out of his stupor, realizing that he’s been staring at the boy and everything in the cart for an unnerving amount of time. 

“Oh, sorry. It’s just—” he wracks his brain and still draws a blank, shakes his head and decides, it can’t be that important, can it? “Nothing, it’s nothing.”

But then the wind gusts against his back from the open doorway and it clicks.

 “Wait, you’re not wearing a jacket,” David says, and he can’t believe he’s only just now realizing this. “Were you walking around out there without a jacket this whole time?”

Max frowns and looks down at the pajamas he’s wearing. He doesn’t seem to see the issue though, and looks back up at David with a shrug, “So? It’s long sleeves.”

He says that as if thin flannel fabric should be good enough during the tail-end of wintertime just because it’s a long-sleeved shirt—as if it _isn’t_ like twenty-five degrees out and cold enough to see your breath. Sure, it was in the thirties yesterday, but even that’s still too gosh darn cold for any kid to be running around in without the proper winter clothes. Even a sweater—while not ideal—would be better than what Max is wearing right now.

David looks back over his shoulder at the open door. He cautiously eyes the gradually dimming sky and the way those swollen grey clouds look ready to burst with snow or freezing rain. In all his searching through the different aisles, he hadn’t seen a single hoodie or sweatshirt being offered for sale, not that he’d really expect there to be one at a grocery store. He supposes he could try and search the backrooms for something an employee might have left, but he really doesn’t want to waste any more time here fumbling around in the dark—not to mention Max is already on edge about leaving. David doesn’t want to give him the chance to rethink that decision and then have to have the same conversation all over again.

In the end, it’s an easy decision to make. Max is already sick and—no matter how illogical the thought is—David doesn’t want him getting sicker.

He shrugs out of his own jacket and drapes it over Max’s shoulders, tells him, “Alright, put this on,” like it’s no big deal, because it really isn’t a big deal. David can deal with being cold for a little while. Max can’t though, not in his state.

“You don’t have to—” Max starts to say, but David cuts him off with a smile, shaking his head and telling him, “It’s no problem at all, Max.”

He helps the kid get his arms through the too-long sleeves, then zips the jacket up to Max’s chin and flips the hood over his head for added warmth. Max is practically swimming in it all, more like he’s wearing a blanket with sleeves than anything else. Frankly, he looks adorably ridiculous, though David’s smart enough to keep that thought to himself.

“Alright, you ready?” David keeps his tone peppy, like they’re _not_ about to walk out into a scene from a horror movie; just a nice little stroll through the parking lot, that’s all.  

Max ducks his head down, buries his face against his bear and pulls the hood down further over his head so that he won’t have to see. He nods his head against the bear, and David can just barely make out the kid’s faintly muffled _yeah._

“Okay, let’s head out!” David says, and with his fingers wrapping back around the front bars of the cart, he looks over his shoulder and walks backwards into a nightmare.

It’s probably one of the worst things he’s ever had to deal with. The _Vicks_ may help with the smell, but there’s only so much that can be done to block out the entire disgusting experience of pushing decomposing bodies out of the way with your foot. There are dragging, squishing noises that David does his best to block out by talking non-stop about a random summer at Camp Campbell when he was a kid. Max keeps his head down the whole time and doesn’t say a word, so David’s not completely sure the boy is listening. As long as he speaks loud enough to keep Max from hearing those sounds though, that’s all that really matters to him.

It’s a slow, nauseating process. Shuffling backwards a few feet at a time, pushing and sliding dead-weight out of the way to clear a path and pulling a heavy grocery cart along with him. He tries to keep his eyes on Max and the cart as much as possible—only occasionally looking back when he needs to—because sometimes those white sheets ride up over rotting flesh and David would just prefer to see as little of that as possible.

The whole thing takes about twenty minutes overall. By the time they reach the edge of the parking lot, David can feel certain… _fluids_ soaking into his sneakers and socks and the cuffs of his pants. It will all have to be thrown out the moment he gets back to his apartment complex, and he thinks he might just have to pour bleach over his feet too for his own peace of mind. He should probably take another shower too, all things considered.

It’s not until they’re well out of sight of it all that he stops walking, and then David’s just standing there on the sidewalk, staring down at this small child he’d found during a random trip to the grocery store, the streets quiet and empty around them and not a single other person in sight.

_‘Now what?’_

 

* * *

 

_TBC_

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are greatly appreciated, and feedback lets me know how the story's being received. So let me know what you think! :)  
>  [(Link to my Tumblr if anyone's interested)](http://deranged-black-kitten.tumblr.com/)


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